Putin: Victory over the West

Below are excerpts from Putin’s Victory Day speech as published in translation by Bloomberg. It is an awkward translation, as most translations are, and does not do justice to the emotions and impact of the Russian original.

My notes are off-the-cuff analyses.

Comrades,

Donbass militia alongside with the Russian Army are fighting on their land today, where princes Svyatoslav and Vladimir Monomakh’s retainers, solders under the command of Rumyantsev and Potemkin, Suvorov and Brusilov crushed their enemies, where Great Patriotic War heroes Nikolai Vatutin, Sidor Kovpak and Lyudmila Pavlichenko stood to the end.

I am addressing our Armed Forces and Donbass militia. You are fighting for our Motherland, its future, so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II, so that there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis.

Today, we bow our heads to the sacred memory of all those who lost their lives in the Great Patriotic War, the memories of the sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends.

We bow our heads to the memory of the Odessa martyrs who were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in May 2014, to the memory of the old people, women and children of Donbass who were killed in atrocious and barbaric shelling by neo-Nazis. We bow our heads to our fighting comrades who died a brave death in the righteous battle – for Russia.

I am parsing Putin’s speech out of order. This part comes towards the end. which is where the most important parts of speeches often are.

And here we see that Putin is not just commemorating victory over the German Nazis in 1945, but the struggle to make the world free of people like them–the “torturers and death squads”— the people who kill innocent women and children-- the people who burnt alive the Odessa Martyrs in the the House of Trade Unions in 2014—all those complicit, the enablers and supporters.

Western Ukraine’s war against the Russians of the Ukrainian South and East is a war of conquest and occupation— ethnic cleansing, if not genocide. How is it different from a Nazi invasion? It isn’t.

And the lesson of WWII is that such aggression and brutality must be resisted.

The Western story—the one you see on CNN and in the NYT and WaPo is different. The Russians invaded a peaceful, democratic country, Ukraine, seeking to annex its lands. The Azovs and the Banderites are “freedom fighters” just like the Contras and Al Qaeda— once upon a time when they were fighting the Russkies.

Until recently, at least, Zelensky was a hero feted in the US Congress and Hollywood. And Putin was a “murderer”.

Earlier in the speech. Putin framed what should be understood as the West’s New Age Fascism.

The United States began claiming their exceptionalism, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, thus denigrating not just the entire world but also their satellites, who have to pretend not to see anything, and to obediently put up with it.

But we are a different country. Russia has a different character. We will never give up our love for our Motherland, our faith and traditional values, our ancestors’ customs and respect for all peoples and cultures.

Meanwhile, the West seems to be set to cancel these millennia-old values.

Such moral degradation underlies the cynical falsifications of World War II history, escalating Russophobia, praising traitors, mocking their victims’ memory and crossing out the courage of those who won the Victory through suffering.

If Putin sounds bitter, he has a right to be.

In the West, history is dead because it is used to bury crimes past and present Strategic Culture

I write a lot about this kind of Western historical revisionism in my Special Article, “End of Civilization”?

Hitler also sought to rewrite history. He too thought his people were “exceptional” and all others should follow. He reinvented German culture and values, with new symbols, and monuments and mythologies. He too cancelled ideas and cultures he didn’t like. How very American.

And, for him Russians were “untermenschen” – even lower than Jews.

The Japanese in their war in China —which appalled even the Nazis with excesses like the Rape of Nanking— saw the Chinese as less than human, fit only to be slaves or medical experiments. It was the same idea as the Germans had for the Russians — and later the Americans had for much of the world, although cosmetically appealing.

American fascism , updated, upgraded, and Hollywoodized, is like an actor: it has a fake smile with perfect teeth—but it is still fascism.

But the rest of the world sees it for what it is.

Yes, there are Chinese volunteers in the Russian army. Guess why. They remember —and so should you.

Russia has lit a torch. Other will light their torches from its.

For Russia it is personal. And emotional.

There is no family in Russia that was not burnt by the Great Patriotic War. Its memory never fades. On this day, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the heroes march in an endless flow of the Immortal Regiment. They carry photos of their family members, the fallen soldiers who remained young forever, and the veterans who are already gone.

And:

Soldiers and officers from many regions of our enormous Motherland, including those who arrived straight from Donbass, from the combat area, are standing now shoulder-to-shoulder here, on Red Square.

We remember how Russia’s enemies tried to use international terrorist gangs against us, how they tried to seed inter-ethnic and religious strife so as to weaken us from within and divide us. They failed completely.

Today, our warriors of different ethnicities are fighting together, shielding each other from bullets and shrapnel like brothers.

This is where the power of Russia lies, a great invincible power of our united multi-ethnic nation.

Who are Russia’s enemies? Russia has been very clear about that, which is why the SMO is the SMO and not a war.

Russia’s “enemies” are neo-Fascist Western countries, who seek to undermine and subvert and destroy their victims by creating inter-ethnic and religious strife, as the US did in Chechnya and central Asia— and later in Georgia and Ukraine.

But Russia is proud of its ethnic diversity, its different religions and cultures. It resists.

How will the SMO end?

For Russia! For Victory!

So says Putin.
The conflict with Ukraine will be won on a battlefield in Ukraine, which is where the conflict with the West will end, too.

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