Peak parade

The leaders of Russian allies such as Tajikistan and Cuba looked on from the stands, united in absolute indifference to the fate of their own people. Putin’s poodle Lukashenko was in the front row, looking even more like Doctor Evil than usual.

In Ukraine, meanwhile, the carnage continued as yet more Russian missiles were launched. Short of giving direct orders to launch ballistic missiles at Ukrainian targets live from Red Square, the Kremlin would be hard pressed to outdo the violent symbolism on display. It was the ultimate Putinist parade. Nothing could have made it worse.

Putin made a speech dedicated to the World War II veterans whose memory the jackbooted soldiers marching through the square were supposedly there to honour. Tell that to Vanda Obiedkova who survived the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, only to die at 91 in a basement in the remains of Mariupol during a Russian onslaught on the city. Boris Romanchenko, 96, survived Buchenwald but not a Russian shell that hit his apartment in Kharkiv. Ivan Lysun, a Red Army veteran who fought against Hitler in Germany, died at 97 after his house was destroyed by Russian troops. This is how the Kremlin actually honours the memory of World War II veterans, IStories reminded us on Thursday.

Putin said the war began in 1941 and that the USSR had fought alone against the Nazis for three years. He hoped the world had forgotten the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the barbaric carve-up of Poland agreed between Stalin and Hitler, the occupation of the Baltic States and the invasion of Finland.

As in Soviet times, the events of 1939–1941 were to be deleted from the official record, but not just to whitewash Stalin. Putin openly admits that the reason he seeks revenge on Ukraine is its refusal to accept his worldview. People in Ukraine are therefore being killed because they don’t believe in Putin’s right to rewrite history at will. Those who don’t believe in neo-Soviet myths about the war will die. The so-called “special military operation” is a direct continuation of World War II. Russia has essentially gone to war to repeat its victory. Like a time-traveller, Putin is at once in both 1942 and 2024, declaring those of little faith to be Nazis who need to be liquidated.

The Soviet Union’s defence of the country against the Nazi invasion was truly the people’s war. It touched every family, and brought grief and tragedy to everyone that lived through it. For decades after the event, frontline soldiers preferred not to discuss their wartime exploits, remarking only that it should never be allowed to happen again.

Now that there are almost no veterans left, the dictatorship has appropriated the people’s memory and made it into a people-killing machine. By fighting against the Nazis, the USSR placed itself squarely on the right side of history, but the symbolism of that decision is now being used to justify fresh atrocities.

Putin treats the historical tragedy that befell Russia from 1941 to 1945 much as he does his palace in Gelendzhik: his own personal property. It’s not just the Russian people who belong to him now, its past does too. If you go off the dictator’s script when talking about the war, you can expect consequences. To deny the fanciful connection between World War II and the invasion of Ukraine automatically makes you an enemy of the state. To insist that war is an absolute evil that must never be repeated now amounts to a full frontal assault on the dark forces occupying the Kremlin.

As recently as 2010, Ukrainian soldiers marched alongside their Russian counterparts in Moscow’s Victory Day parade. Many of those same men are now defending their homeland from the ongoing Russian invasion. Just 14 years ago, both countries shared in World War II a common source of grief, but both believed there was still hope for the future. Faced with this new war, with entire cities reduced to rubble and with millions of refugees, we, a generation that was never supposed to experience the horrors of war, now understand that the future can only begin once the fighting ends.