Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged, on Saturday, to do “everything in his power” to “completely eliminate Nazism” on the occasion of the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the siege imposed by the German army on the city of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, during World War II.
During the inauguration of a memorial to the victims of this siege, which lasted 872 days between 1941 and 1944 and claimed more than 800,000 people, due to famine, epidemics, and bombing, Putin said, “The siege of Leningrad was unprecedentedly cruel.”
He added: “For 8 decades, our grief for these victims and these broken destinies has not diminished.”
The Russian President, flanked by his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, who attended the celebration, pledged: “We will do everything in our power to eliminate Nazism once and for all.”
The inauguration of this memorial, which consists of a huge statue of the Mother of the Fatherland with her children, comes about a month before the second anniversary of the Russian attack on Ukraine, which Moscow launched, according to the Kremlin, in order to “disarm” and “eradicate Nazism” from this former Soviet republic, which… It is led, according to Putin, by neo-Nazis.
The Kremlin regularly asserts that the conflict is a continuation of World War II.
On Saturday, Putin once again considered that “the Kiev regime continues to glorify Hitler’s accomplices (…) and use terrorism against everyone who does not satisfy it.”
The Russian president has long indicated that he was personally affected by the Siege of Leningrad, one of the worst massacres of World War II.
Vladimir Putin (71 years old) was not born during the siege, but his older brother died during the siege.
Putin’s mother almost died of starvation during the siege, while his father, who was fighting in the ranks of the Red Army, was wounded near Leningrad.
Some buildings in St. Petersburg still bear warnings from the Soviet authorities on that day about air raids in a city of 5 million people whose memories are haunted by the effects of this tragedy.
The memory of the “Great Patriotic War” – the name given in Russia to the armed conflict between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany – is a source of immense pride in the country and is a fundamental pillar of the militaristic patriotism advocated by the Kremlin.
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2024-01-28 04:22:09
