Berlin.
Vladimir Putin claims to be fighting “Nazis” in Ukraine. Even 78 years after the end of the Second World War, this is a mockery.
May 8, 1945 is and will remain the day for Germany day of liberation from the horrors of National Socialism. This liberation is not only due to Americans, French or British. It was only made possible by the resistance of the Red Army and the immeasurable willingness to suffer of the Soviet population in the “Great Patriotic War”. More than 27 million people – including around eight million Ukrainians – lost their lives in the course of Adolf Hitler’s campaign of conquest.
For many years, every German foreign minister has paid tribute to this massive toll of blood by visiting Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the western wall of the Kremlin. Most recently, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) laid a wreath on the red granite slab with the eternal fire in January 2022 – a few weeks before the start of the Ukraine invasion. She spoke of the “shame” and “awe” she felt at that moment in the face of the burden of the past.
Ukraine war – background and explanations for the conflict
“Victory Day”: Columns of tanks and rockets for a gigantic show of patriotism
If this Tuesday in Russia the “day of the victory‘ is celebrated, it is not about a historical review coupled with the moral imperative ‘Never again war!’ In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin is celebrating a martial military and weapons show. More than 10,000 soldiers – also from the front in Ukraine – march on. Whole columns of tanks and rockets are deployed in a gigantic show of patriotism.
It is to be condemned that Putin projects the past into the present. For him, the Ukraine war has the same enemy constellation as the Second World War. According to this reading, the Soviet Union fought Hitler’s Nazi troops in the 1940s.
Russia: The liberators of 1945 are the aggressors of today
stand today russian soldiers against the defenders in Ukraine who have been denigrated as “Nazis”. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is therefore not the freely elected head of state of Ukraine, but the figurehead of a “Nazi” regime installed by the West that threatens Russia. A bizarre interpretation given that Zelenskyj is Jewish.
Putin is running a flawless falsification of history. He compares that brutal Russian war of aggression in the Ukraine with the heroic defensive struggle of the Red Army against Hitler’s henchmen. The Kremlin chief stylizes Russia as a victim of a Western conspiracy. But the truth is: the liberators of 1945 are the aggressors of today. This goes hand in hand with increasing internal repression.
Tens of thousands of soldiers die a senseless death in front-line operations in Ukraine
That Putin tries to discredit Ukraine with the “Nazi” bludgeon, has ideological reasons. The 70-year-old sees himself on an imperial mission. He dresses up this as a historic order to get back Russian soil that his country is supposedly entitled to. Putin compared the Ukraine war to Tsar Peter the Great’s Northern War against Sweden. After the collapse of the Soviet Union – according to the head of the Kremlin “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” – he dreams of a renaissance as a world power, Russia.
With this vision of a big, strong and powerful of Russia, which is respected and feared in the world, Putin wants to gain followers in domestic politics. But it’s a backward-looking vision. And it comes at a frighteningly high price: tens of thousands of soldiers are dying a senseless death in frontline operations in Ukraine. For the first time since 1939, borders in Europe are being moved by force. Today’s invasion of Ukraine and the liberation from Nazi rule by the Red Army are worlds apart.
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