Putin Strikes Aggressive and Narrowly Russian Nationalist Pose

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 9 – In his Victory Day speech, Vladimir Putin struck a militantly aggression Russian nationalist pose, not mentioning the role of other countries or other nations within the USSR in defeating Hitler but instead stressing that Kyiv is “an ancient Russian capital” and that Russians today accept the idea that they must die rather than surrender.

            It may very well be that the quotation, “the fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists,” often ascribed to Winston Churchill is apocryphal; but there can be little doubt that the idea behind those words are fully applicable to Putin’s words today – and indeed to the policies he has put in place over the last 20 years.

            And it is time to start using that term to describe the Putin regime not because it is perhaps the strongest curse word one can use about another state but because it is an increasingly accurate description, one that explains not only much that has happened so far but provides little hope for improvement as long as Putin and his minions are in power.

            In his speech, Putin said that “victory was achieved as a result of the valor of participants of the defense of ancient Russian capitals, Kyiv and Novgorod the Great, the fearlessness of the defenders of Smolensk, Odessa, and Sevastopol, and infinite resilience of the residents of blockaded Leningrad,” making no distinction between cities inside Russia and those outside.

            And instead of celebrating the role of the various countries and peoples to the defeat of Hitlerism, Putin denounced others for historical revisionism and claimed a role for the Russians far greater than even the remarkable one they made (censoru.net/35476-kiev-russkaja-stolica-putin-na-parade-vystupil-s-derzkoj-pretenziej-a-veteran-prognulsja-pered-putinym-vspomniv-krym.html).

                But perhaps the clearest signal of where Putin is and what he seeks was delivered when he left the podium to march alongside veterans.  One of them, as Censoru.net reported, turned to him and emotionally thanked the Kremlin leader for the operation that led to the Anschluss of Crimea in 2014.

            “I am struck with admiration by your operation in Crimea. Good man!” one veteran said, not letting go of Putin’s hand.  As one blogger put it, that sounds eerily like the reaction of one German soldier to Hitler at the time of the Sudetenland crisis: “My fuehrer,” he said, “I am struck with admiration by your operation” there.