President Vladimir Putin has used a commemoration of World War II to rally support for his army’s offensive in Ukraine. He compared the fighting to the invasion by Nazi Germany and suggested that Moscow might use nuclear weapons.
Putin attempted to garner more support for his assault on Ukraine on Thursday when he arrived in the southern city of Volgograd to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, achieved at a great cost.
He claimed that Russians were prepared to fight “until the end” and compared Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine to the war against Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945.
Putin said in the city on the Volga River that used to be called Stalingrad, “Again and again we are forced to repel the aggression of the collective West.”
“We are not sending tanks to their borders, but we have something to respond with, and it won’t just be armoured vehicles,” the statement reads. This should be understood by everyone, “he added.
He stated, “A modern war with Russia will be totally different.”
Putin has made numerous threats to use nuclear weapons against the West ever since he sent troops to pro-Western Ukraine in February.
“It’s true, but unbelievable. German Leopard tanks are threatening us once more.”
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‘To go until the end’
According to Putin, “Readiness to go to the end, to do the impossible for the sake of the motherland, for the sake of the truth was and is — in the blood, in the character of our multinational people”
He spoke after laying flowers at the city’s famous landmark, a hilltop battle memorial with the 85-meter-tall “The Motherland Calls” sculpture of a woman with a raised sword.
The commemorations in the city in southern Russia come at a time when the Kremlin is looking to increase its offensive in Ukraine, supported by tens of thousands of reservists who were mobilized in the fall.
More than a million soldiers and civilians perished during the nearly six-month Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43, which left the city in ruins.
The victory of the Red Army was a turning point for the Allied forces as well as the Soviet Union, which had suffered numerous heavy defeats.
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Bust of Stalin
A bust of dictator Joseph Stalin was unveiled in Volgograd on the eve of Putin’s arrival.
Since Putin came to power in Russia in 2000, a growing number of Russians are appreciating the significance of Stalin’s contribution to history, and analysts have noted that Stalin is slowly being rehabilitated in the country.
Numerous Russian officials have been promoting Stalin as a tough leader who led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II and oversaw the country’s industrialization out of a sense of nostalgia for the USSR’s status as a superpower.
The Great Patriotic War, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 20 million people in the Soviet Union, is revered for its legacy.
Following a request from veterans of the war, officials in Volgograd declared Wednesday and Thursday to be public holidays.
Eight years after Stalin’s death, the city was given the new name Volgograd in 1961.
On February 2 and May 9, when Russia holds nationwide celebrations to mark the anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II, the city has been temporarily renamed Stalingrad since 2013.
Source: AFP
