In Putin’s speech there are eloquent details between the lines: what was left without threats and without resentment.

This is the 21st time that Putin addresses the participants of the so-called Victory Day parade on Red Square. Unlike the West, where the end of WWII is often humbly commemorated, Russia and several post-Soviet countries celebrate the end of WWII on May 9 with a loud military parade and pompous speeches. This was not always the case.

“Dear veterans, Russian citizens, brothers and sisters,” Putin said on May 9, 2000, just two days after his first inauguration. In his speech, he then focused on respecting soldiers, both current and veteran, alluding to strengthening the country’s economy and honoring those killed during the war.

Joining him were high-ranking officers and then until recently he resigned as Boris Yeltsin, who briefly allowed the former KGB agent to rise to adviser, then director of the Soviet security successor FST, and soon to the post of prime minister. .

When Putin finished speaking, the soldiers marched into the square; Without military equipment, a parade could only be dreamed of nostalgia in Russia, which is recovering from the crisis. The national anthem, Mikhail Glinski’s “Patriotic Anthem”, was played for the last time. Already next year, as in the last 20 years, the restored melody of the Soviet anthem was already playing.

Red Square was once again rocked by the latest military technology, and Putin’s tone and language had changed: the emphasis on respect for veterans was overwhelmed by insults, insults, and outright lies and hypocrisy. But these were only part of the differences that symbolically showed the true face of the Kremlin.

A dose of lies and hypocrisy

“Russia has consistently defended international law. Together, we will firmly defend our national interests to ensure the safety of our people,” Putin said Sunday, although Russia, under his rule, has repeatedly ignored international law, both by occupying and annexing Crimea. in 2014 as when prosecuting the prosecutors in the Judges of the case January 13 in Lithuania.

This was not the only moment in Putin’s speech in which he adopted deadly juggling terms. Speaking of the supposed “return of Russophobia and slow ideology” from a time when “the slogans of race and national supremacy, anti-Semitism and Russophobia had become more cynical than ever,” Putin did not blink, adding that “the agreements were easy to get Stop the creep. World War “, and many of the” reminiscent of its uniqueness “theories reminiscent of Nazi vagabonds are being resurrected.

Putin himself spoke openly about the “unique genetic code of Russia” a few years ago, and this year he mentioned it again, commenting on the differences between Russia and the West, especially the United States. Once again, former Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also spoke about the unique Russian genetic code. Putin’s mention of “zero deals” also shows the Russian leader’s inconsistent approach to historical issues.

As early as 2005, the conference criticized the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and its secret protocols, noting that these documents had been declared null and void by the 1989 Congress of People’s Deputies.

It was precisely before the war, the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany, signed in 1939, that not only divided Central and Eastern Europe into Berlin and Moscow, but also they also paved the way for totalitarians. aggression against its neighbors, the Baltic countries, Poland, Finland, simply for breaking the agreements appointed by Putin.

However, last year, Putin began engaging in a landmark debate allegedly sparked by a European Parliament resolution condemning the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and its secret protocols: Putin has repeatedly publicly defended this shameful agreement, in stark contrast to the one from 2005.

Plan to legalize censorship

The fact that his May 9 speech sounded not only promises “to defend the national interests of Russia”, but also threats that “forgiveness and justification for those who are making aggressive plans” is not a coincidence. And while Putin himself did not mention who is supposed to be making these plans, he began to speak in prison jargon about those who are supposedly rewriting history.

It is difficult to translate into Lithuanian the “uninterrupted punishment of criminals” (сборища недобитых карателей): this is the description of the alleged Nazi followers who justify traitors and criminals supposedly only with anger in the neighborhood of Russia.

Later, Putin’s representative, Dmitry Peskov, clarified that the president was referring to “the neo-Nazis who raise their heads in Europe: Ukraine and some of the Baltic countries.” Such epithets sounded just days after an ordinary amendment to the scandalous law, drafted by Yelena Jampolskaya, chair of the Russian Duma’s Committee on Culture, was registered with the State Duma after long delays.

This politician from “United Russia” is a great admirer of both Putin himself and the Russians, as an exceptional nation, supposedly protected by the glorifier of God. He is infamous for his statements in which he was able to reconcile respect for God, specifically the Orthodox Church, and the regime of Joseph Stalin, who systematically destroyed the same church.

She openly praised the last dictator in a 2013 article, “It’s Hard to Be a God,” which said that Stalin had been “sent from heaven to save Russia on the world map.” Earlier, he said in an interview that “Russia can be saved from the abyss by two forces: God and Stalin.”

Jampolskaya’s proposed amendment to the law on the perpetuation of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 is not the first: the law was passed in 1995, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin was amended 4 times. It is true that the coronavirus pandemic prevented us from considering an amendment to consolidate the rewriting of history last year. The amendment now registered for your consideration is finally moving forward successfully with the support of Putin himself.

The draft amendments to the law propose “to prohibit speeches or publications that compare the objectives, decisions and actions of the political or military leaders of the USSR and Nazi Germany and the Axis states.”

“If our editors or editors don’t have enough mind, conscience and disgust to avoid similar passages, they need help with legislation,” Jampolskaya scoffed. Paradoxically, these amendments were forced to be made by “an American blogger.”

The latter is Mark Manson, an American self-education specialist and author of the bestseller “The Subtle Art of Not Hitting Yourself (and Others).” Violence and massacre of its members: if not by the Nazis, by the Soviets some years later. “

It is proposed that the author of such books or those who quote them on social media be punished mainly with administrative sanctions, although in Russia in 2016, the Supreme Court punished blogger Vladimir Luzgin from the city of Perm just for reminding the Soviet General and Aggression Nazi against Poland.

Luzgin noted in an account by VKontakte that the Kremlin was silent on this historical fact, but the Supreme Court of Russia evaluated it as a denial of Nazi crimes and the decisions of the Nuremberg tribunal. It is the historical events pointed out by V. Luzgin that in recent years have been a particular obstacle for Russia and the Kremlin itself.

In 1939, Nazi Germany and the USSR not only cooperated in the economic, commercial and military fields, but also coordinated their aggressive actions against neighboring states. It was the Soviets who carried out the massacres of Polish officers and intellectuals in Katyn, for which they blamed the Germans for many years, and later, after acknowledging their lies, began to change their minds again.

The only guest – authoritarian leader

Yet the most eloquent symbol of what the West thinks of Putin’s speeches and Kremlin policies this year is the Victory Day parade itself: if foreign leaders were still available in Red Square a few years ago, this time Putin received the only guest, the one from Tajikistan. “President” Emomal Rahman, who has ruled the country in an authoritarian manner since 1994. And this, Rahman’s visit is linked to his desire to warm up alongside Putin, in hopes of gaining support in the renewed border conflict with Kyrgyzstan.

It is no coincidence that Russia, which has damaged relations with the West and has been sanctioned, not only did not receive guests from the West, save for the formal representation of various diplomatic missions at the ambassadorial level, but also ignored the end of the World War. II: Putin did not mention his key allies in the United States, the support of the United Kingdom during World War II.

Russia still loves to emphasize the myth that the Allies delayed the opening of the Second Front, and the only help in the fight against Nazism was canned food. In fact, most historians and experts agree that without the support of the Allies, the USSR would have lost to the Nazis, as they received thousands of tanks, planes, trucks, ammunition, petroleum products and other means of war under the Landliz program. .