“German tanks are threatening us again”: Vladimir Putin on Thursday drew a parallel between his military campaign in Ukraine and the war against Nazism, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory against Hitler’s armies in Stalingrad.
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The next day, in a statement relayed by the Russian press agencies, the master of the Kremlin again threatened Westerners by raising the specter of a “modern war” with Russia.
“Those who hope to defeat Russia on the battlefield do not seem to understand that a modern war with Russia will be very different for them. »
For years, the Russian president has presented himself as a staunch defender of the memory of the triumph of the USSR over Nazi Germany, a source of immense pride in Russia and which has practically become a state cult.
And since the start of the offensive he launched in Ukraine on February 24, Vladimir Putin has mobilized this imagination extensively by assuring that the political leaders in power in Kyiv are “neo-Nazis” at the origin of a “genocide of the Russian-speaking populations of this neighboring country.
Thursday, in front of soldiers covered with medals and officials gathered in Volgograd (south-west), the former Stalingrad, he drove the point home again.
“It’s unbelievable, but German Leopard tanks, with crosses drawn on them, are threatening us again,” he said, comparing Hitler’s panzers and Leopard 2 tanks.
Bust of Stalin inaugurated
Considered one of the bloodiest in history, with around two million deaths in total, the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943) changed the course of the conflict.
The Soviet victory in this city takes on added symbolic importance as the first anniversary of the February 24, 2022, launch of the military operation in Ukraine approaches, at a time when the Russians are stepping up their attacks in the east of this country after a series of setbacks in the fall.
On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the victory at Stalingrad, a bust of Stalin was unveiled in Volgograd, a city of one million people on the banks of the Volga.
The Russian authorities have had an ambivalent position towards Stalin since the fall of the USSR: officially denounced for the State Terror he orchestrated in the 1930s and until his death in 1953, he was still buried in front of the Kremlin, on Red Square.
He remains respected by many Russians, who highlight his role in the defeat of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union.
On Thursday, a military parade was held in Volgograd. Wreaths of flowers were also laid in large numbers on Mamayev Kurgan, a strategic hill which was the subject of terrible fighting and has remained for decades a place of pilgrimage for those wishing to pay homage to the exploits of the Red Army.