When Russia celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany with an offer from patriotism and the competition in 2005, US President George W. Bush was sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin with the leaders of France and Germany.
This was the first time that an American president was at the Moscow event to honor the 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians who were killed along the brutal eastern front in World War II.
At that time, it was framed as evidence of Russia’s international influence and place among the great powers in the world.
This year, most of the leaders of Western countries are boycotting the event they see as a propaganda scene, however Many others It will attend, including the presidents of China, Brazil and Venezuela. It is not clear whether any American official will attend.
“the Countries that send leaders not, on a large scale, those that were actually part of the European theater of World War II, “ Sam Green, a professor of Russian policy at the King’s College in London and director of democratic flexibility at the European Policy Analysis Center.
((Putin) attracts a crowd to his geopolitical project at the present time. “
The Kremlin, who continues to pay his vision of a multiple world in a challenge to the West, has so far refused to agree to a 30 -day ceasefire in the United States in Ukraine, and instead it is used on the day of victory for the framework of its current war as a barbaric battle that Russia chooses only alum.
Drafting the day of victory
Thursday In a meeting With Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin said that both countries stand committed to “honoring the anniversary of the war years and standing against the return of the new and military Nazis today.”
It is a rapprochement that was deliberately made in the media and through national offers installed throughout the country. In dozens of Russian cities, the advertising boards that were described as described as “sadness” were reunited after the end of World War II, which Russia refers to in the name of the Great Patriotic War.
Over the past few years, other advertising panels are lined up on the streets of the city that urge men to participate in what Russia calls its “private military action” in Ukraine. Earlier this week, one of the channels produced a report as a soldier fighting in Ukraine, an ancient fight against the Soviet Union, met.
The narrator notes that “only one moment in time” separates the two men, and that the young Russian soldier will eliminate May 9 on the confrontation line “where he will continue to defeat the enemy and approach victory.”
Green says it is a deliberate effort to frame what is happening in Ukraine as a fair fight, in an attempt to quell any public frustration of the time when the war continued – or even anger at the fact that Russian cities are now being attacked by Ukrainian aircraft.
A little general criticism
Looking at a cruel campaign against any opposition, there is little protest or opposition when it comes to Russia’s war on Ukraine. People speak more freely outside the country, including those who fought simultaneously for the Red Army and served the Soviet Union.
When it comes to opinions inside Russia, CBC News searched through Russian social media platforms, where the public conversation on the anniversary often focused on a sense of pride and belief in the final victory in the current war. CBC has not been able to report from inside Russia since the government closed the broadcaster’s office in the spring of 2022.
In one of the two years in the year where people were talking about Russia’s plan to celebrate the victory day with a three -day ceasefire, a step that Kiev saw as a trick of manipulation, some expressed no confidence that Ukraine would agree to it, while others said they wanted to fight Russia more strongly.
One commentator said: “I do not understand Putin’s logic, or maybe he made a mistake in estimating our strength.”
“If this has already started, then it must be completed.”
In another group, when a woman suggested that world leaders reach Moscow to a procession closer to a “feast during the plague period”, other commentators accumulated to attack her and question her loyalty.
Under Russian law, anyone can be punished for comments that are a reputation, which is why criticism is rare and friendly materials.
Green historically says that the conversation on the day of victory was focusing on loss and sacrifice, and the Russian phrase used a lot, “will not be a war.”
Today, it is not uncommon to hear another phrase or see it installed on cars on abundant stickers: “We can do it again.”
This can be taken means that we can go to Berlin again, but some make a wider explanation, and they see it as a warning to all Europe and the United States
((Victory Day) has changed from a conversation about a memory … to a more aggressive military position. “
Leningrad’s hero, now in Kyiv
It is a particularly difficult to reconcile these few survivors who fought for the Red Army or volunteered in the Soviet war effort and now find themselves living in their remaining days in the cities where the attack is being attacked again.
She was placed in her apartment in Kiev is the medals and awards that Ludyla Varska received from the 98 -year -old from the Soviet Union to serve her during Leningrad brutal blockadeThe Russian city is now known as St. Petersburg.
Several hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, about a third of the city’s population, during a two -year siege by the axis forces, which resulted in hunger on a large scale.
At that time, Verska was a teenager and used sand buckets to help extinguish incendiary bombs, which were designed to set fire to the buildings.
When the bombs were struck, she, her mother and brother were joining the boxes and surfaces in their streets.
Now, with bad hearing, you rarely wake up when the alarm whistles in Kiev cry at night. But when you hear them or air defense explosions, she left vibrating and afraid.
“This is terrible,” she told a separate staff working in CBC News on Thursday.
“I do not even understand … many Ukrainians speak Russian, and there are many Ukrainians in Russia. “
“Everyone is losing”
Verska says that most of her family was killed in World War II and ended up moving to Kiev in the 1960s with her husband. Despite the prizes, she never attended a victory procession in Russia, but she understood the reason for the memory of honoring history.
“Let them celebrate … We must celebrate because we won,” she said
Now, you say that everyone is losing.
“Why is this happening … it’s very bad.”
In a village outside Kyiv, 99 -year -old Kuzma Samchenko believes that the world is on the cusp of the upcoming Great War.
He was called to fight with the Soviet forces, as German forces invaded Ukraine in 1941.
“During the war, I was trying not to shoot because the soldiers on the other side were sent to the war exactly as I was,” CBC News told CBC News.
His worrying voice grew because he said that he did not blame the soldiers who are asking them to march forward, but politicians are from both countries.
“The innocents are the ones who die in this war.”
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