President Vladimir Putin on Sunday promised that Russia will “firmly” defend nationwide pursuits and denounced the return of “Russophobia.”
“Russia consistently defends international law. At the same time, we will firmly defend our national interests to ensure the safety of our people,” Putin mentioned whereas reviewing Russia’s conventional World War II victory parade in Moscow.
The Russian chief additionally denounced what he known as a creeping return of ideologies of the time, when “slogans of racial and national superiority, of anti-semitism and Russophobia, became ever more cynical.”
Putin additionally warned in opposition to makes an attempt to falsify historical past and relativize the actions of “traitors and criminals.”
The parade on Moscow’s Red Square commemorating the 76th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in WWII featured over 12,000 troops and greater than 190 items of army {hardware}, together with intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, in addition to fighter jets and helicopters.
Russia’s ties with US, EU strained
Victory Day parades, which solely turned an annual occasion after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, additionally occurred Sunday in dozens of cities throughout the nation.
During Putin’s twenty years in energy, the vacation has taken on rising significance in projecting Russia’s renewed army would possibly.
This 12 months’s parade precedes parliamentary elections in September and comes at a time when Moscow’s relations with the West are strained over all the things from Ukraine to the destiny of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
The United States and Russia have expelled one another’s diplomats in latest months in a collection of retaliatory strikes and Moscow and EU member states have been concerned in an analogous tit-for-tat diplomatic dispute.
Sunday’s parade follows an enormous present of Russian army power close to the borders of Ukraine and in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Kyiv in 2014, and an uptick in preventing in japanese Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian authorities forces.
Moscow mentioned the build-up, which alarmed the West, was a coaching train in response to exercise by the NATO army alliance and Ukraine. It has since ordered a withdrawal of some troops.
