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Parade that lasts 1 hour. 15 minutes, it was held amid continuing concerns about the COVID-19 coronavirus infection crisis, as well as persistent tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow’s role in the wars in Syria and Ukraine, exacerbated by accusations of political interference and historical revisionism.
The Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, won 75 years ago, is personally important to Putin, who used the USSR’s military triumph of 1945 to fuel national pride in Russia today.
This year, due to a coronavirus pandemic, Putin was forced to cancel the Victory Day parade, traditionally held on May 9. It was now held a week before a referendum on July 1 on controversial constitutional reforms that could allow Putin to remain in the presidency until 2036.
Before the parade began, Putin declared that Soviet soldiers fighting against Nazi Germany did not need foreign territory.
Scanpix / ITAR-TASS Photo / Victory Day Military Parade
“It is impossible to imagine that the world would have happened if the Red Army had not defended it. Its soldiers did not need war, nor other countries, nor fame, nor honors. They [tik] he tried to finish off the enemy, win and go home, “he said.
“After defending their country, they continued to fight, freed European countries from predators, ended the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust, saved the German people from Nazism and its disastrous ideology,” added Putin, stressing that Soviet soldiers had paid the price of European freedom. cannot be refunded. “
“It is our duty to keep reminding us of this,” the president said during a televised ceremony, urging the Russian people to remember that the Soviet Union had a heavy burden in the fight against Nazism.
Some 13,000 people participated in this year’s parade. historic troops and military machines, as well as the latest military equipment highlighting Russia’s combat capabilities.
More than 20 models of military equipment that participated in the parade were shown to the public for the first time, including the dense T-90M and Buk M3 air defense missile systems.
According to officials, the new date for the parade was chosen because the first post-war Victory Parade on Red Square, during which Soviet soldiers tossed Nazi flags on the ground in front of Lenin’s mausoleum, took place on April 24. June 1945.
Strict statements
Earlier this month, Putin condemned the West for “insulting Russia” by undermining the USSR’s contribution to victory in World War II.
“For Putin, this issue is the basis of his national idea of the rebirth of Russia, of Russia as a powerful state, of the elevation of the country,” said historian Vitaly Dymarski.
By promoting the memory of World War II, the president also has an opportunity to mobilize Russians around a unifying national idea, he added.
Moscow has exchanged strong diplomatic statements with the European Union and the leaders of former communist countries, including Poland and Ukraine, who are highly critical of Russia.
In December Putin condemned Warsaw’s “incredible cynicism” and accused Poland of massacre of Jews in 1945 and of controversial agreements with Adolf Hitler before war broke out.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, for his part, dismissed the comments as “nonsense,” and his country boycotted this year’s Holocaust remembrance ceremony in Israel because Putin was present.
The Russian president also condemned a resolution passed by the European Parliament in September condemning the 1939 split between Poland and other Eastern European countries between the Soviet Union and Germany.
Putin criticized the statement, saying it was an attempt to equate the USSR with Nazi Germany.
In 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany entered into a non-aggression pact, the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, whose secret protocols defined the areas of influence of both countries. This treaty is considered one of the main factors that led to World War II, which began with the German and Soviet attack on Poland.
But Moscow says an agreement with Berlin was necessary because Europe had left the Soviet Union alone to halt Germany’s ambitions by signing the Munich Agreement in 1938, which opened the hands of the Nazis to annex the western part of Czechoslovakia.
Politics, not history
Russia also blames the West for playing down its role in the war, which killed 27 million people. Citizens of the Soviet Union, and at the same time exaggerate the contribution of the United States and Great Britain.
Moscow believes that the Allied landing in Normandy in June 1944 was only one of the episodes that led to the defeat of the Nazis, not a decisive event.
Russia said it was “deeply outraged” when the White House failed to mention the Soviet Union among the countries that had defeated Nazi Germany in its official Twitter message in May.
The victory of the Soviet Union in World War II also assured Moscow a leading role in shaping the post-war world order, including the seizure of new territories and a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
The Kremlin is of the opinion that this heritage should “unite the people” against Russia’s opponents, Dymarski said.
“This whole dispute with Europe is not history but politics,” he said.
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