Russia Celebrates 70th Anniversary of Victory Over Nazis

Yes, the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II is traditionally celebrated a day later in Russia than it is in the West, where V-E Day came yesterday.

Russia recognizes it one day later, for historical reasons. And they honored the victory over Hitler and the Nazis earlier today in Moscow, although there was a notable absence of any Western leaders in attendance during the official ceremonies, which may have been the last such major ceremonies with a significant number of actual veterans in attendance.

Putin spoke, and thanked the veterans, honoring them for their sacrifices in the fight against fascism.

But he also took a swipe at the United States, asking if the troops fought such a hard and bloody war in order to simply accept a "New World Order" essentially dominated by one power.

We need to understand, here in the West, and particularly in the United States, that the sacrifices of the Russians/Soviets were very real. By almost every estimates, the casualties on the Soviet side were over 20 million, and some estimates reach up to 27 million soviet deaths!

To put that in perspective, that it almost 90 percent of the population of Canada!

Yes, they earned the right to take pride in the victory over the Nazis, and we should also understand their fears and trepidation about Western countries holding hostile attitudes towards Russians. After all, their history has seen numerous invasions into Russian territory, with the Nazi invasion decades ago being only the most recent, albeit costliest, one.

Remember also that Americans have a tradition of placing weapons of mass destruction as close to Russian borders as possible - and they are quite close. There were American missiles in Turkey and Greece, which are right by Russia. Let us remember that we as a nation freaked out and almost were willing to start a nuclear war when threatened with the prospect of the arrival of such weapons into Cuba by the Soviets.

I do not agree with Putin's role in the Ukrainian conflict, although we should at least remember that Russians have every right to not only take pride in their war effort, since they were the real driving force to the ultimate defeat of the Nazi war machine. We need to remember that the Soviets were begging the Western Allies, particularly the United States and Great Britain, to open up a western front against the Nazis, and it took years for them to do so. Then Vice-President, and future President, Harry Truman was quoted as saying that the best strategy to take was to wait and allow the Nazis and the Soviets to bleed each other white, even though, officially, the Soviets were our allies.

So, they have a right to hold the West with some contempt and skepticism, and we should not now hasten to criticize them on this, of all, days.

The purpose of this blog entry was to honor the Soviet/Russian war effort that ultimately, truly defeated the powerful Nazi war machine, and I am taking this moment now to do so.