C T Online Desk: President Vladimir Putin on Monday defended Russia’s war in Ukraine as necessary to protect the “Motherland” as Moscow flexed its military muscle at a huge parade marking the 1945 Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
Fierce battles raged in eastern Ukraine while Putin made his Victory Day speech against a backdrop of intercontinental ballistic missiles rumbling through Moscow’s emblematic Red Square.
Ukrainians and Westerners accused Putin of exploiting the World War II anniversary, with protesters in Warsaw tossing blood-red paint on the Russian ambassador, chanting “fascists!” and hoisting a Ukrainian flag, as he visited a cemetery.
But Putin sought to channel Russian pride for what he has described as a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, which is led by an elected Jewish president.
Putin blamed the West and Ukraine for the two-and-a-half-month conflict, telling the parade that Russia faced an “absolutely unacceptable threat” and warning against the “horror of a global war”.
“You are fighting for the Motherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of the Second World War,” he said.
The celebration in Red Square also featured some 11,000 troops and more than 130 military vehicles, although a planned military flypast was cancelled.
“Nobody could have imagined that 77 years later, fascist forces, Nazi forces would come back to life, killing civilians, butchering Russians into pieces,” Anastasia Rybina, a participant, told AFP.
“Putin conducts politics so well, well done to him. He makes sure that our boys don’t die, that there is as little blood as possible. I bow down to him,” added Taisiya Chepurina, 81, whose husband fought in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943.
Western powers were unimpressed by Putin’s words. British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace accused Putin of “mirroring fascism”, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the Russian leader was “in denial” and US State Department spokesman Ned Price called his speech “patently absurd” and an “insult” to history.
– ‘They will never succeed’ –
In the critical port of Odessa, European Council President Charles Michel paid a surprise visit of support and was forced to take shelter during a strike.
“The Kremlin wants to execute your spirit of freedom and democracy,” he said in a video posted from Odessa. “I am totally convinced they will never succeed.”
