Russia Marks ‘Victory Day’ with Annual Attempt to Erase U.S. Role in Winning WWII

Russia observed “Victory Day” on Thursday, a holiday commemorating victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The day has become an increasingly strident nationalist spectacle under Vladimir Putin, who has all but erased the U.S. and its allies from memories of the war.

Russia’s state-run Tass news outlet quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying that no ambassadors from “unfriendly countries,” meaning those which disapprove of Russia invading Ukraine, were invited to the Victory Day parade for the third year in a row.

“They have not been invited since 2022 because the regimes in these countries are pursuing – let’s formulate it as an unfriendly policy; this is a term that was introduced – but in fact they are pursuing an aggressive policy toward our country. They formulate it as inflicting strategic defeat. For our part, we formulate it as hybrid warfare,” Zakharova rambled.

Zakharova belligerently declared that Putin’s regime would never “allow” other powers to “desecrate” Victory Day by inflicting “historical amnesia” on Russia.

“We celebrate this holiday, we consider it profound, we pass on traditions from generation to generation. We protect both the holiday itself and the heroes whom we honor on this day,” she said.

“This is a holiday that must retain its true meaning and remain in its true historical form and tradition. We need to understand what kind of day this is. It is the day of the triumph of light over darkness,” she declared.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks on a visit to his campaign headquarters after a presidential election in Moscow on March 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Tass also quoted an American veteran of World War II on Thursday, 98-year-old Frank Cohn, who stressed that defeating the Nazis was a “team effort.” 

Tass struggled to interpret this as Cohn chastising Americans and Europeans for not appreciating Russia’s contributions enough, although it sounded more like he was gently asking the Russians to pump the brakes on their efforts to minimize the role played by the Allies.

“I think it was a team effort. It had to be a team effort. And we understood it was a team effort because we sent equipment over to the Russian side. Because it was helpful to us. It wasn’t that we were just helping the Russians. It was helping us and was helping us indirectly,” Cohn said.

Cohn was part of the American force that linked up with advancing Soviet troops at the Elbe River south of Berlin in April 1945, cutting Nazi Germany’s forces in half and sealing the doom of the Thousand-Year Reich about 988 years ahead of schedule. Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker three days after the Elbe encounter was announced to the world.

“World War Two would have never finished when it did, except that it was both Russia and the United States and the Western countries. So it was the Americans and Brits on one side and the Soviet Union on the other side. If either one of them hadn’t been involved, I don’t know what would have happened. Hitler could have won as a matter of fact,” Cohn told his Tass interviewers.

Putin delivered his usual nationalist tirade on Thursday, accusing the Western world of trying to “forget the lessons of WWII.” Among the most important of those lessons was the need to act quickly to prevent warlike authoritarian nations from invading their smaller neighbors, but Putin did not dwell on that one.

Instead, Putin heaped praise on the Russian troops waging a brutal invasion of Ukraine, a crime against international order that the Russian despot insists on describing as a “special military operation.”

“Those taking part on the frontline are our heroes,” he said.

Putin mixed in some blustery warnings to the Western world, implying once again that he is ready to unleash a nuclear holocaust if any other nation directly intervenes in his conquest of Ukraine.

“Russia will do everything to avoid a global confrontation. But at the same time, we will not allow anyone to threaten us. Our strategic forces are always on combat alert,” he said.

The BBC impishly noted that Victory Day 2024 was a rather sad affair compared to the huge parades of past years. Instead of the usual display of Russia’s vast arsenal, only a single T-34 tank left over from WWII trundled across Red Square. Last year’s Victory Day parade also featured only a single tank.

“During the parade, Russian soldiers were seen carrying what appeared to be drone jammers, likely a reaction to the potential for attacks from Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles. The Russian capital has been hit before, and Ukraine has been increasingly conducting long-range drone strikes into Russia territory,” Business Insider (BI) observed.

BI added that Putin managed to get an RS-24 Yars and Iskander-M intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) into the parade to back up his threats of nuclear annihilation.

Putin’s WWII mythology is designed to make Russians see the war in Ukraine as a kind of extension or sequel to the war against the Nazis, casting Ukraine as the catspaw of foreign aggressors who are once again trying to destroy Russia. 

Politico on Thursday found some Russians who were deeply offended by Putin co-opting Victory Day into his nationalist fantasies of military conquest:

“For me this is not a celebration but a day of mourning,” said Valeria, 20, whose father has been mobilized. Like others quoted in this article, she declined to give her full name, fearing repercussions for speaking out. 

“The essence of this day used to be that there should never be another war — that is what our ancestors gave their lives for. But somehow the exact opposite is happening.” 

She and a small group of similar-minded people on Thursday gathered at Moscow’s Poklonnaya Gora war memorial site on the coldest May 9 since 1945, wearing white scarves or carrying white flowers or ribbons, symbols of anti-war protest. 

“In hindsight, you could say this kind of militarized celebration prepared the ground for this horrible war. That’s turned this day of remembrance completely upside down,” said a Russian who fled to the United States in 2022 to avoid being conscripted into Putin’s war.

The Washington Post thought the dearth of military hardware in the Victory Day parade was less significant than the “bellicose” and “confrontational” confidence of Putin’s speech.

Two American infantrymen fill bottles and a tin hat at a water pump near Samree in January, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes region of Belgium. (AP Photo)

“Revanchism, mockery of history, the desire to justify the current followers of the Nazis are part of the general policy of Western elites to incite more and more regional conflicts, interethnic and interreligious enmity, and to restrain sovereign, independent centers of world development,” Putin said.

The Washington Post noted that Red Square was festooned with “victory” flags and banners, and the marching soldiers made a show of applauding with gusto when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu drove past.

The parade also included a flyover by Russian warplanes spraying the colors of the Russian flag in the sky, an attraction that has been missing since 2022, and a display of Western military hardware captured from Ukrainian forces.