In an ominous sign for the War in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin went to Volgograd, Russia today to speak on the 80th Anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Hitler’s Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad. The Soviets won the long, bloody battle with at least one million casualties.
Putin likened the battle then to Russia’s War in Ukraine, drawing on Germany’s promise to provide Leopard Tanks to Ukraine. He compared it to Nazi Germany’s use of tanks to attack the then Soviet Union.
Obviously, the roles are reversed. Now, Putin is the invader – the aggressor. But that does not keep him from playing the victim and ratcheting up the violence in the days ahead. What is ominous about this speech is the resolve it seems to show on the part of Russia to not only keep up their War in Ukraine – but to intensify it. For the Russians, Stalingrad represents their fighting spirit and willingness to endure unimaginable casualties. That may mean much more suffering ahead in Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin evoked the spirit of the Soviet army that defeated Nazi German forces at Stalingrad 80 years ago to declare on Thursday that Russia would defeat a Ukraine supposedly in the grip of a new incarnation of Nazism.
In a fiery speech in Volgograd, known as Stalingrad until 1961, Putin lambasted Germany for helping to arm Ukraine and said, not for the first time, that he was ready to draw on Russia’s entire arsenal, which includes nuclear weapons.
“Unfortunately we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country,” Putin told an audience of army officers and members of local patriotic and youth groups.
“Again and again we have to repel the aggression of the collective West. It’s incredible but it’s a fact: we are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on them.”
Russian officials have been drawing parallels with the struggle against the Nazis ever since Russian forces entered Ukraine almost a year ago.
Ukraine – which was part of the Soviet Union and itself suffered devastation at the hands of Hitler’s forces – rejects those parallels as spurious pretexts for a war of imperial conquest.
Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle of World War Two, when the Soviet Red Army, at a cost of over 1 million casualties, broke the back of German invasion forces in 1942-3. . . .