To achieve this vision, he wants to capture territory that once formed the historic area of Novorossiya, such as south and eastern Ukraine. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of causalities during WWII, with an estimated 8 to 11 million military deaths, compared to 400,000 US soldiers.Īs he re-writes Russian history, Prof Clarke claimed Putin is positioning himself alongside Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Stalin as the fourth leader of a "great and powerful" Russia. One where the country is - and should be - accorded great power status in Europe.Īt the Victory Parade, Putin used to praise Russia and its allies for their common victory in WW2, he said, but "the way Putin speaks now, you would think Russia was the only country that fought". Putin has been revising Russian history for decades, claimed Prof Clarke. Since its 2008 invasion of Georgia, he said Putin has voiced a romantic version of Russian nationalism. Is Russia’s version of WWII history controversial or challenged? The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War Two, more than any other country, and Putin has railed in recent years at what Moscow sees as attempts in the West to revise the history of the war to belittle the Soviet victory. Ukraine and the West dismiss the fascism claim as nonsense and say Putin is waging an unprovoked war of aggression. Putin casts the war in Ukraine as a battle to protect Russian speakers there from persecution by Nazis and to guard against what he terms the US threat to Russia posed by NATO enlargement. "We will not make such a mistake a second time, we have no right."
"The attempt to appease the aggressor on the eve of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be a mistake that cost our people dearly," Putin said on 24 February when he announced what he called a special military operation in Ukraine. Putin has repeatedly likened the war in Ukraine to the challenge the Soviet Union faced when Adolf Hitler's Nazis invaded in 1941. Credit: Pavel Golovkin/AP How does Russia see Victory Day? Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks in 2014 during a Victory Day Parade, which marks the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany.
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