Marking the defeat of the Nazis in WW II today, 69-year Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a somber 11-minue speech in Red Square while a traditional military parade showed off Russia’s latest military hardware. With the war in Ukraine raging on, Putin told the Red Square crowd that NATO had encircled Russia, threatening Russia’s national security. Putin said he tried to get the U.S. and NATO to come to the table to renegotiate new security arrangements, all rebuffed, forcing Russia to defend its homeland in Ukraine. Ukraine 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a very different message, telling the Ukraine people that Russia had become the new Nazis of old, invading his country. Both messages showed the massive gulf between two sides with no end to the war appeared in sight. Putin sees U.S. and NATO involvement in Ukraine as a threat to Russia.
V-Day represents an emortional national holiday for Russia, knowing the sacrifices in WW II made by Russian troops and civilians. “Today we celebrate the Day of Victory of the Nazism. And we will not give anyone a single piece of our history,” Zelensky said. “Our enemy dreamed that we would refuse to celebrate May 9 and the victory over Nazism, so that that word “de-Nazification” gets a chance. Millions of Ukrainians fought Nazism,” Zelensky said, completely rewriting Ukrainian history. While some Ukrainians fought Nazi occupation in WW II, the vast majority to the population cooperated with Nazis and deported the lion’s share of the Jewish population to death camps in Poland and Germany. Zelensky totally exaggerates Ukraine’s role in fighting Nasism in WW II, instead the record shows massive complicity with Nazis under German occupation for most of the war.
Zelensky hypes Ukrainian resistance against Nazis in WW II, largely to appeal to the Untied States currently funding the Ukrainian government and the war effort. “The one who is repeating the horrific crimes of Hitler’s regime today—following Nazi philosophy, copying everything he did—he is doomed,” Zelensky said. “We won then. We will win now. Very soon, there will be two Victory Days in Ukraine,” Zelensky said, blaming Putin for his Nazi-like occupation. Zelensky makes no apologies for joining the U.S. Cold War battle against the Russian Federation, now revealing itself in Ukraine. Zelensky’s speech writers cater to a U.S. audience, telling the world that his country battles to save democracy in Europe against the Russian menace. But Putin gives a very different perspective, complaining about how NATO on Russia’s borders continues to impinge on his country.
Putn’s border dispute with Ukraine has morphed into a U.S. proxy war against the Russian Federation. Biden said in Warsaw, Poland March 26 that Putin could not remain as Russian president. Then, following the same line of reasoning, 68-year-old U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said April 26 in Ramstein, Germany, that the aim of the U.S. military was to weaken the Russian army to the point it could no longer wage war with its neighbors. Biden and Lloyd’s statements confirmed to the Kremlin that the U.S. was at war with the Russian Federation. “Defending the motherland when its fate is being decided has always been sacred,” Putin said. “Today you are fighting for our people in Donbas, for the security of Russia, our homeland,” Putin told the Russian people. While dismissed by the West, Putin’s message echoes the words May 3 of Pope Francis who said NATO probably caused the Ukraine War.
Putin made clear in his V-Day speech that NATO, as Pope Francis said, caused the Ukraine War. “The NATO countries did not want to hear us. And that means in fact that they had very different plans, and we could see that. They openly were preparing for yet another punitive operation in Donbas for an invasion of our historic lands in Crimea,” Putin. Putin’s statements are rejected as propaganda but anyone observing the lead up to the Feb. 24 Ukraine invasion knows that’s exactly what happened. No Western nation or press admits that the whole mess started Feb. 22, 2014 when a CIA-backed, pro-Western coup toppled the Kremlin-friendly Kiev government of Viktor Yahukovych. Putin invaded Crime March 1, only a week after he finished hosting the Sochi Winter Olympics. Putin annexed Crime to protect his Sevastopol naval base after Yanukovych was chased out of Kiev.
So much of the Ukraine War comes with propaganda from both sides, but especially the U.S. and European Union. If the U.S. admitted that the CIA destabilized the region in 2014, the world would have a better understanding of what led up to the Ukraine War. If Kiev Major Vitali Klitschko had not led the Feb. 22, 2014 pros-Western coup, Ukraine would still control Crimea, the war in Donbas would not have occurred and the Ukraine War would never have happened. So when it comes to a complete picture of what happened, the world must go back to the CIA-backed coup that toppled the Yanukovych Kiev government. If the U.S. and Ukraine really wants to end the conflict, then both need to study the history, accept responsibility and negotiate in good faith in Instanbul to end the conflict.
