Putin hails WWII heroes on 80th anniversary
MOSCOW >> Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday marked the 80th anniversary of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union by hailing the country’s World War II heroes and calling for efforts to strengthen European security.
The Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and the country lost a staggering 27 million people in what it calls the Great Patriotic War. The enormous suffering and sacrifice have left a deep scar in the national psyche, and the Victory Day marking the end of World War II in Europe that is celebrated in Russia on May 9 is the nation’s most important secular holiday.
“The day of June 22 still evokes anger and sorrow in the hearts of all generations, causing pain for the destroyed lives of millions of people,” Putin said in a speech at the Unknown Soldier’s Tomb at the Kremlin wall. “Those trials, those terrible years, are literally imprinted into our memory.”
The invading Nazi forces quickly overran the western part of the Soviet Union and came as close as less than 19 miles to Moscow. But the Red Army rebounded and routed the Nazis near the capital, dealt them a crushing defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 and then drove them back across Europe all the way to Berlin.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Putin on Tuesday to “express empathy with the unmeasurable woes and suffering brought by the war,” the Kremlin said.
The Kremlin has been anxious to see international recognition of the nation’s wartime sacrifices and its role in defeating the Nazis.
In an article published Tuesday in the German weekly Die Zeit, Putin emphasized that “despite attempts to rewrite the pages of the past that are being made today, the truth is that Soviet soldiers came to Germany not to take revenge on the Germans, but with a noble and great mission of liberation.”
He hailed postwar efforts to restore mutual trust but blamed NATO’s eastward expansion to embrace former Soviet bloc countries in Central and Eastern Europe and ex-Soviet Baltic republics for the deteriorating security.