LONDON, May 9 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin will lead celebrations marking the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany on Monday as Russian forces fight Ukrainians in one of Europe’s deadliest conflicts since the end of World War II. 77 years.
Putin, Russia’s top leader since 1999, has used Victory Day in recent years to kill the West from a rostrum in Red Square before a parade of troops, tanks, missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Read more
Spring over the nine domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral will include supersonic fighters, strategic bombers and, for the first time since 2010, an IL-80 Doomsday command aircraft to transport Russia’s top forces in the event of a nuclear war.
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Putin has repeatedly likened the war in Ukraine – which he describes as a battle against dangerous “Nazi” nationalists in Ukraine – to the challenge to the Soviet Union when Adolf Hitler invaded in 1941.
“Our common duty is to prevent the renaissance of Nazism, which has brought so much suffering to people from different countries,” Putin said in a message to the peoples of 12 former Soviet republics, including Ukraine and Georgia.
Ukraine and its allies have denied accusations of Nazism in Ukraine and that Russia is fighting for survival against the aggressive West, saying the Kremlin leader has unleashed an unprovoked war in an attempt to rebuild the Soviet Union.
Putin, who has repeatedly expressed resentment at the West’s treatment of Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, says Ukraine has been used by the United States to threaten Russia.
US President Joe Biden has described Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a battle in a much broader global battle between democracy and autocracy, and has repeatedly called Putin a war criminal. In a speech in Warsaw in March, Biden said the former KGB spy could not stay in power.
Russia denies accusations by Ukraine and the West that its forces committed war crimes after the February 24 invasion.
VICTORY DAY
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people during World War II, including many millions in Ukraine, but eventually pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin, where Hitler committed suicide and the red Soviet flag of victory was hoisted over the Reichstag in 1945.
Apart from the defeat of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812, the defeat of Nazi Germany was the most revered military triumph of the Russians, although both catastrophic invasions from the West left Russia deeply sensitive to its western borders.
Victory Day is an almost sacred holiday for Russians, as most Soviet families mourn the loss. For Russians, the collective memory of the war is one of the few indisputable events in a turbulent history torn by controversy.
Although Putin has tried to halt the decline of Russia’s once-powerful armed forces, the conflict in Ukraine illustrates weaknesses in the country’s army. The losses have not been made public, but Ukraine says Russia’s losses are worse than the 15,000 Soviet troops killed in the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan war.
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Report by Guy Falkonbridge Edited by Francis Carey
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