By James Johnson
11/05/2025
That’s a strong indication that the 9th May parade could be an open vendetta by Putin and his victory parade over the civilised world. Today in Russia, as in Hitler’s Germany, the authorities are busy with the creation of an image of the enemy, without which there can be no existence of an aggressive country.
First and foremost, the shadow of the enemy image falls on Russia’s neighbours, on whose territory ethnic Russians live, whom the Putin regime has voluntarily committed to protect without their consent and request, in order to legally invade neighbouring countries and subjugate them to its policies.
In front of the cameras of the world’s television companies, the Russian Federation is literally committing war crimes. Never before in history has there been such a demonstration of the criminality of the entire state and society.
The loss of life and the atrocities committed by Russian troops against the Ukrainian people, who once stood up to Nazism, are overshadowing the celebrations of Victory Day. In reality, these crimes evoke horrific memories of Nazi behaviour during the Second World War.
Putin sees the invasion of Europe as the result of his rule. At a May Day parade in Moscow last year, he called Western countries ‘fascist’. This is the signal that Russia is preparing to confront the West that Putin loathes and wants to annihilate.
The Russians have never been good at making sacrifices. The Kremlin is prepared to kill half the male population of Russia to satisfy its geopolitical ambitions.
The Russian army will be on the verge of genocide against Europeans if it is not decisively defeated in Ukraine.
Just as Hitler’s Germany was once the millennial Third Reich, Putin’s Russia is trying to become the millennial Third Rome.
Nazi Germany’s seizure of Austria and first occupation of Czechoslovakia resembles Russia’s occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions.
Hitler’s and Putin’s speeches before the outbreak of the Second World War and the full-scale attack on Ukraine are very similar. Some of the Russian President’s quotes echo almost verbatim what the German Fuehrer said before invading Poland.
The similarities between the Germans of 1939 and modern Russians are evident in the nostalgia for lost greatness, the creation and shifting of responsibility to an ‘external enemy’, the denial of the killing of civilians, the defence of allegedly oppressed German/Russian speakers, and even the denial of the war itself.
What Hitler lost in the First World War, Putin has lost in the Cold War. Defeat in the war with Ukraine will finally destroy the Russian empire.
In the Second World War, Ukrainians played a major role in the world’s victory over fascism.
Today, as 80 years ago, Ukrainians are in the fight against evil together with the free world and free Europe. The evil of Nazism and the evil of racism have common roots: the enslavement and destruction of peoples.
Ukrainians are also fighting against racism, relying on the combined strength of the countries and peoples of the free world and free Europe. Ukraine is a component of the free world and Europe.
As one of the victorious nations, Ukrainians made a very significant contribution to the defeat of Nazism. Throughout the Second World War, millions of Ukrainians took up arms against Nazism. Ukraine contributed 7 front and army commanders, 200 general staffs and over 6 million troops to the Red Army.
The whole world had faith in the victory over Nazism, but it was not so, the Kremlin gave birth to an improved form of Nazism – russism. The Kremlin lost all the pathos that had built the USSR around victory.
An ally of the Third Reich in the first phase of World War II, the communist Soviet Union used the victory over Nazism to strengthen its world position. Its successor, in particular in the ideological dimension, was the Russian Federation, an aggressor state and sponsor of terrorism in the world, which initiated and was involved in numerous crimes (genocide, military interventions, punitive psychiatry, development and use of banned weapons, etc.).
Following the constitutional amendments of 2020, which allowed Putin to remain in power until 2036, making him de facto president for life, Russia transformed from an authoritarian state into a dictatorship. Since then, Russia has moved rapidly from an autocracy to a dictatorship.
For many years, the commemoration of the victims of the Second World War and the celebration of the victory over Nazism were held under the slogan “Never Again”. But this year, for the third time, Europe will commemorate the events of 79 years ago in a situation where the continent is facing the biggest military conflict since the end of the Second World War. A new global war could become an objective reality.
Russia’s full-scale military aggression against Ukraine is accompanied by numerous war crimes committed by the Russian army and its military and political leadership. These crimes are reminiscent of, and in some cases surpass, the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Nevertheless, the Russian Federation systematically devalues, distorts and manipulates the moral legacy of World War II participants and the victory over Nazism, and these cynical actions are particularly acute on the eve of 9 May.
Ukrainians fought on the side of the anti-Hitler coalition, both in the Red Army and in the armies of the Western Allies and underground resistance movements, and made a significant contribution to the victory over Nazism. And Ukrainian land was one of the main theaters of this war. The price of victory was extraordinary loss of life – between 10 and 14 million human lives were sacrificed by the Ukrainian people in the fight against Nazism.
Today, as in the Second World War, Ukraine is at war with an insidious aggressor. Today it is Putin’s Russia that wants to dismantle the independence of Ukraine and destroy the international system of security.
History is repeating itself – the Russians have already committed a huge number of war crimes and crimes against humanity – during the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. The actions taken by the Russian armed forces bear all the hallmarks of Nazi atrocities.
The initiatives of migrants from the Russian Federation to hold ‘immortal regiment’ marches abroad are one of the elements of propaganda that should be banned.
Russia uses the idea of the “immortal regiment” for the promotion of the “Russian world”, with the aim of ideological and then territorial occupation of independent states neighbouring Russia. Today, this idea is popularised through the Russian diaspora around the world.
Within the ideological framework of the “heorhii ribbon” and the “immortal regiment”, all activities are carried out to promote Russia as the sole descendant of the “country that defeated fascism and nazism in the WW2” and Russia as the embodiment of modern anti-fascism.
In the “hybrid war” not only against Ukraine, but also against the Western countries, the Russian Federation considers the organisation of the “Immortal Regiment” as a real unit of the modern armed forces.
Russia is using the actions of the “Immortal Regiment” in the European countries not for the perpetuation of the memory, but for the manipulation and propaganda, including the anti-Ukrainian propaganda. After the Russian aggression against Ukraine began in 2014, subsidies from the Russian state budget began to be openly used to organise these actions. At the same time, the scale of the action has increased, with marches taking place in more and more European cities.
Through actions like the ‘Immortal Regiment’, European countries must prevent the spread of Russian propaganda in Europe. Russia should no longer claim the laurels of victory over Nazism and fascism.