May 5, 2025
Diane Francis
On May 9, President Vladimir Putin will preside over an annual military parade in Red Square to celebrate “Victory Day,” commemorating the 80th anniversary of Russia’s Second World War defeat of the Nazis. World leaders are invited to pay homage to Putin’s fiction that Russia is a great superpower that singlehandedly forced Germany to capitulate in 1945. But the nasty subtext is that the war was jointly launched in 1939 by Putin’s hero, Josef Stalin, in partnership with Adolf Hitler. The Red Army’s soldiers were overwhelmingly from Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus, and, lastly, Putin’s propagandist projection of power today is a myth. His military is on the ropes in Ukraine, and Putin even requested a short truce during Victory Day due to fear that Ukrainian missiles and drones would rain down on his parade. But his request was ignored. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia broke previous truces. He then cautioned VIPs against attending Putin’s “party” because it was possible that Russia could orchestrate “arsons, explosions, and other actions then blame Ukraine,” he said. “They are responsible for your safety. We will not provide guarantees because we do not know what Russia might do on those dates. We do not recommend visiting Russia from a [security] standpoint. And if you choose to go, that is your personal decision.”
Leaders have canceled plans to attend the shindig, and some claim to have come down suddenly with illnesses. And Putin fumes. His spokesmen have twisted Zelensky’s response by misrepresenting his caution as a threat against Russia’s World War II commemorations and its veterans. Putin unleashed his attack dog, former President Dmitry Medvedev, who pulled out his usual Armageddon response by stating that if Ukraine attacked Moscow on May 9, nobody could guarantee that Kyiv would survive to see May 10. “He is threatening the physical safety of veterans who will come to parades and celebrations on the holy day,” Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said. “His statement is, of course, a direct threat.”
Zelensky threatened no one. Ukraine’s military isn’t planning on blowing up Red Square anytime soon. He merely warned that Russia would be quite capable of committing terrorist acts and blaming Ukrainians as a way of sabotaging a peace deal.
Putin’s revisionism about Russia’s military greatness drew President Donald Trump into the fray. He debunked Russian boasts about the past and swiped at the Europeans. On May 2, he posted that the United States did “far more” than any of its allies to secure victory in World War II. “Many of our allies and friends [in Europe] are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II. I am renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I. We won both Wars; nobody was close to us regarding strength, bravery, or military brilliance. We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”
So there, Vlad and the European Union. Unfortunately, Trump’s bragging rode roughshod over history and facts, as usual, and completely missed the point: Both conflicts were called “world wars” for a reason. They were essentially multinational efforts on both sides, with the Americans and Europeans winning against the Germans, Italians, and Japanese. It is also fair to assume that Trump isn’t aware that it was Ukrainian, Polish, and Belarusian soldiers, not Russian ones, who bore the brunt of repelling and forcing Germany’s army to retreat. They fought alongside the Red Army, as did Poland, but Moscow has tried to erase their participation and contribution. Naturally, this is a sore point among Eastern Europeans, now under siege by Putin. On May 2, the Polish media pointed out that Polish soldiers raised their flag that day in 1945 over the Victory Column (Siegessäule) in Berlin – symbolizing the liberation of Berlin from Nazi rule – before the Soviet flag was hoisted. Their soldiers also entered the city before the Russians did.
The weaponizing of history is not just intellectually dishonest but is dangerous because it mythologizes the intentions of maniacs and fuels foreign policy foolishness worldwide. Failure to understand that “Hitler and Stalin were allies,” said Russian pro-democracy activist Garry Kasparov, has allowed Stalin’s protege Putin to continue to wage war more easily. Failure to know history also condemns leaders to repeat it. Why would any leader trust or admire Putin, a protege of Stalin’s, if they understood that Stalin helped Hitler murder millions of people? Or that he then double-crossed allies after pushing the Nazis back to Germany and continued the war by erecting an iron curtain until 1989?
Thus, the same war continues in Eastern Europe. It wasn’t until the Gorbachev era that the Russian state apologized for the USSR’s role in all of its past atrocities. Now Putin flouts international treaties, laws, and norms as he claws back territories lost in 1989. He weaponizes memory and offers fabricated excuses to validate his re-occupations. This is why, as Putin’s parade on May 9 looms, world leaders should not only boycott the event but should forcefully condemn Putin and Russia. The destruction of Ukraine must stop, Putin must be jailed for war crimes, Russia must be politically and economically isolated, the line must be drawn, and all the other Second World War allies must guard and rebuild Ukraine in return for its sacrifices, military courage, and protection against Putin’s evil empire.
Ignoring Putin’s fabrications and commemoration this year on May 9 is not an option. No one should honor a country that helped launch the worst calamity in human history and that continues to flout international law at every turn.