Few countries mark the end of World war II with the same enthusiasm and fervor as Russia, for which the victory over Nazi Germany 80 years ago remains a source of immense pride and a defining moment of history.
Victory day, held on May 9, is the most important secular festival of Russia, reflecting its sacrifice in times of war. But it is also used by Kremlin to strengthen patriotism and recover the prestige of superpower that lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia for 25 of those 80 years, has turned the day of victory into a key pillar of his mandate and has tried to use it to justify his invasion of Ukraine that has been three years.
He has also sought to underline the failure of Western efforts to isolate Moscow inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders to the festivities, which this year have been overshadowed by reports of Ukrainian attacks with drones aimed at Moscow and serious interruptions in the airports of the capital, as well as Internet cuts on mobile phones on Wednesday.
A look why the day of victory is so important for Russia and Putin:
The Soviet sacrifice of World War II
The Soviet Union lost the amazing figure of 27 million people in what the Great Patria War of 1941-45 calls. That sacrifice left a deep scar in the national psyche.
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 and quickly invaded the western part of the country. They were only 30 kilometers (less than 19 miles) from Moscow in October of that year, but the Red Army recovered and defeated the invaders.
The Soviet troops inflicted overwhelming defeats to Germany in 1943 in Stalingrad (now called Volgograd) and Kursk, and then pushed the Nazi forces back through the west of the Soviet Union to Berlin.
Putin has pointed out that 1 in 7 Soviet citizens died in the war, while the United Kingdom lost one in 127 and the United States one in 320.
“The Soviet Union and the Red Army, no matter what someone tried to prove today, made the main and crucial contribution to the defeat of Nazism,” Putin wrote in 2020.
A family history of Putin of World War II
Putin is deeply emotionally linked to the history of World War II, saying “we will always remember the high price that the Soviet people paid for victory.”
He often invokes stories of his parents, Vladimir and Maria, in the war, and the death of his two -year -old brother, Viktor, known as “Vussa”, during the Nazi siege of two and a half years to his home in Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg.
“It was the place where my mother miraculously managed to survive,” Putin wrote. “My father, despite being exempt from active duty, volunteered to defend his hometown.”
-He also recalled in a magazine article how his father talked about a mission of recognition behind the Nazis lines when his comrades were killed and he survived hiding in a swamp and breathing through a cane when the German soldiers walked a few steps away.
Putin’s father was seriously injured. After leaving the hospital, he walked home with crutches to see the morgue workers taking his wife’s body to be buried.
“He approached her and seemed to her by breathing, and told the Camilleros: ‘He is still alive!’” Putin’s father told his son.
Morgue workers replied: “He will die along the way, he will not survive.” But Putin said his father separated them with the crutches and forced them to take her back to his apartment.
The role of World War II in Kremlin policies
Putin’s emphasis on the history of World War II reflects not only his desire to show Russia’s military power, but also his effort to unite the country behind his agenda.
World War II is an unusual event in the divisive history of the Nation under the communist regime that is revered by all political groups, and Kremlin has used that feeling to foster national pride and underline Russia’s position as a global power.
Victory Day parades are a massive sample of its armed forces, with thousands of troops and dozens of heavy equipment, including mobile pitchers that transport intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear capacity, parading through the red square, and flying dozens of war planes. Military parades are held, fireworks are launched and other festivities are held in cities throughout the country.
The authorities also encourage the demonstrations of May 9 with what is known as the “Immortal Regiment”, in which people carry photos of family members who fought in World War II. Putin joined those marches for several years, taking a photo of his father.
Use World War II to justify Ukraine invasion
When Russia launched its large -scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Putin declared that she was destined to “demilitarization” and “denazification” of his neighbor, falsely claiming that neo -Nazis groups were molding the policy of Ukraine under the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish. The statements were vehemently rejected by kyiv and their western allies.
Putin tried to present the veneration of Ukraine by some of its nationalist leaders who cooperated with the Nazis in World War II as a sign of the alleged Nazi sympathies of kyiv. Regularly made references to Ukrainian nationalist figures such as Stepan Flag, who was killed by a Soviet spy in Munich in 1959, as an underlying justification for Russian military action in Ukraine.
“The Kremlin has mixed these issues and has used victory over Nazi Germany as a basis for building antiucranian narratives,” said political analyst Nikolai Petrov. “In Putin’s mind and in Kremlin’s plans, the victory over the Nazis Rima with the victory over Ukrainian neo -Nazism, as they raise it.”
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
