Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a Victory Day Parade last week to commemorate Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 and told the crowd in Moscow’s Red Square that his country finds itself—once again—in a struggle against enemies seeking its demise. 

“An actual war has once again been unleashed against our motherland,” Putin said, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Putin told the audience that Russia does not see any “unfriendly nations in the West or in the East,” but criticized the “Western global elites” who attempt to keep their power by pitting people against each other and provoke “bloody conflicts and coups.”   

Putin said “any ideology of superiority is by its nature disgusting, criminal, and deadly.”

Putin said the U.S. and its European allies are sponsoring the war in Ukraine—in part—to “further dictate their will, their rights, and their rules.” He said these countries want to keep their familiar system of “robbery, violence and suppression” on the international stage, RT reported.

“During the Great Patriotic War, our heroic ancestors proved that there is nothing stronger, more powerful, and more reliable than our unity,” Putin said. “There’s nothing in the world stronger than our love for the motherland.”

Putin’s critics say he uses the parade to sell his war with Ukraine by appealing to his country’s nationalism. An estimated 24 million Russians died during WWII, according to the National WWII Museum.

The Russian leader used the ceremony to justify the killings of Ukrainians and destroying cities across the country, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said. 

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, told the European Parliament that the bloc should not be intimidated by Putin’s posturing and called on his allies to “remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine for as long as necessary.”

TRENDPOST: Putin drew attention to the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 that has been ignored in the Western media. He said, “The Ukrainian nation has become hostage to a coup which led to a criminal regime led by its Western masters. It has become a pawn to their cruel and selfish plans.”

To understand why Russia invaded, you have to have some sense of the recent history of contention between the two countries. (See “VICTORIA ‘FUCK THE EU’ NULAND WHO SPEARHEADED OVERTHROW OF DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE IN 2014, STILL IN POWER” 22 Feb 2022, “PUTIN BLAMES U.S. FOR UKRAINE COUP IN 2014” 1 Nov 2022, and “RFK JR. AGREES WITH CELENTE: U.S. PUSHED RUSSIA INTO UKRAINE WAR” 9 May 2023.)

Last year, Putin addressed the Valdai International Discussion Club and repeated his claim that it was not Russia that organized a “coup d’état in Ukraine, which resulted in our special military operations. We are not the ones who did it. It’s the West that has driven us to this point. I advocate democratic relations.”

The Trends Journal has long reported on how most Americans have no clue about how the U.S. overthrew Victor Yanukovych, the democratically elected president of Ukraine over the offense of moving the country too close to its neighbor.

One year after the coup, Ukraine was racked by civil war and sunk into depression. The U.S. and EU blamed Russia for the destabilization because of its support of Ukrainian separatists in the Donbas region. And as punishment, the U.S. pushed the EU to impose trade sanctions against Russia.

Slap in the Face

RT, the Russian news outlet, also took issue last week with the European Commission, and Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to visit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Victory Day. 

The paper wrote, “‘Nazi defeat day’ is an odd occasion for a Western figurehead to go praise Ukraine as “the beating heart of today’s European values” considering the country integrated neo-Nazi fighters into the military and welcomed Western countries in training and equipping them.”

Duh-Mock-Racy is also going strong in Europe. Latvian authorities arrested 26 people for celebrating the holiday. RT, citing the Latvian news outlet Delfi, reported that among those arrested were five individuals who allegedly placed flowers at the Freedom Monument in Riga’s Daugavpils Victory Park. 

They have been accused of using “symbols of military aggression” and charged with “public use of symbols glorifying militaristic aggression and war crimes.”