Russia celebrates victory in World War II, a key pillar of Putin’s government

65

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia dressed up patriotically on Thursday for Victory Day, a celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II that President Vladimir Putin has made a pillar of his 25 years of power and a justification for its offensive in Ukraine.

Although 79 years after Berlin fell to the Red Army there are few living veterans of what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War, the victory over Nazi Germany remains the most important and revered symbol of the country’s power and a key piece of its National identity.

Thursday’s celebrations in Russia, led by Putin, who this week began his fifth term in office, remember that war sacrifice and have become its most important secular holiday.

The Soviet Union lost about 27 million people in the war, an estimate many historians consider conservative, and virtually every family lost members.

Nazi troops took over much of the western Soviet Union when they invaded in June 1941, before being forced to retreat to Berlin itself, where Soviet troops raised the hammer and sickle flag of the USSR over the shattered capital. . The United States, the United Kingdom, France and other allies commemorate the end of the war in Europe on May 8.

The immense suffering and sacrifice in cities like Stalingrad, Kursk, and Putin’s native Leningrad — now St. Petersburg — continues to serve as a powerful symbol of the country’s ability to prevail against seemingly overwhelming challenges.

Since coming to power on the last day of 1999, Putin has made May 9 a major piece of his political agenda, with displays of military strength. Columns of tanks and missiles pass through Red Square and squadrons of fighter jets fly overhead while decorated veterans watch the parade. Many wear the black and orange ribbon of St. George, traditionally associated with Victory Day.

Putin, 71, often talks about his family’s history and shares memories of his father, who fought on the front lines during the Nazi siege of the city and was seriously wounded.

Putin says his father, also named Vladimir, came home from a military hospital during the war to find workers trying to take his wife, Maria, who had been mistakenly presumed dead from starvation. But her husband claimed that she was not dead, just unconscious, weakened by hunger. His first child, Viktor, died during the siege when he was 3 years old. More than a million Leningrad residents died during the 872-day blockade, most of them from starvation.

For years, Putin carried a photo of his father at Victory Day marches, as did others honoring war veteran relatives, in a procession known as the “Immortal Regiment.”

Those demonstrations were suspended during the coronavirus pandemic and then for security reasons after the start of fighting in Ukraine.

As part of its efforts to revalidate the Soviet legacy and thwart any attempts to challenge it, Russia has introduced laws that criminalize the “rehabilitation of Nazism,” including punishing the “desecration” of monuments or challenging the Kremlin’s versions of the history of Nazism. World War II.

When he sent troops to Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Putin cited World War II in an attempt to justify his actions, which kyiv and its Western allies called an unprovoked war of aggression. Putin said Moscow’s main goal was the “denazification” of Ukraine, and falsely described the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, as neo-Nazis.

Putin attempted to show Ukraine’s veneration of some of its nationalist leaders, who cooperated with the Nazis in World War II, as an indication that kyiv was sympathetic to the Nazis. He frequently made unfounded references to Ukrainian nationalists such as Stepan Bandera, murdered by a Soviet spy in Munich in 1959, as justification for Russian military actions in Ukraine.

Many observers see Putin’s emphasis on World War II as part of his efforts to regain the influence and prestige of the USSR and employ Soviet practices.

“It is the constant identification with the USSR as the victor of Nazism and the lack of any other solid legitimacy that forced the Kremlin to declare denazification as the goal of the war,” Nikolay Epplee said in a commentary for the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

The Russian leadership, he noted, has “retained itself in a vision of the world limited by the Soviet past.”