Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a Victory Day parade, focusing on the historic importance of the defeat of "Nazi" Germany, at Red Square in Moscow, Friday, May 9, 2014. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Mikhail Klimentyev, Presidential Press Service)

By Carolyn Yeager

Is the president of Russia just a bald-faced liar or is he a complete ignoramus when it comes to the history of his own country and that of Europe?

It has to be one or the other.

In his speech today on Red Square facing the Kremlin, Putin is quoted as saying it was "the Soviet victory in World War Two which saved Europe from slavery and preserved peace on the planet."

Patriotism can cause people to exaggerate and also to play down inconvenient facts, but this is ridiculous. It was the Allied (not Soviet alone) defeat of Germany that actually enslaved all of Europe--the West to International Jewry/Banking and the East to brutal communist/Jewish dictatorships and economic backwardness. Even Eastern Germany was enslaved for 40 years to this Soviet monolith due to its most regretable pyrrhic victory.

The official transcript has Putin saying:

The fierce battles for Moscow and Stalingrad, Kursk and the Dnieper determined the outcome of the whole of World War II. The Soviet people’s iron will, fearlessness and steadfast courage saved Europe from enslavement. It was our country that pursued the Nazis right back into their dens, dealt them the full and final blow [and raped one million women and young girls, from age 7 to 70, and committed every kind of thievery and desecration against German troops and civilians along the way. And this is what can no longer be mentioned in Putin's Russia. -cy] , and achieved victory at a cost of millions of lives lost and terrible trials endured.

I repeat: The victory that is being celebrated today in Russia is in fact one of the greatest tragedies ever to have befallen Europeans.

And just how European is Russia anyway? Here is a picture from May 8, 2014 of Putin with his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Is he White? Is he a European? He looks like an Indian or some non-White mix.



Russian president Vladimir Putin, center, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, left, attend a gala concert on the eve of Victory Day marking the defeat of National-Socialist Germany 69 years ago, in the Kremlin in Moscow on May 8, 2014.

Later in the day, Putin traveled to Sevastopol, Crimea where he presided over a triumphant spectacle of warships and fighter jets, and hailed the incorporation of Crimea's 2 million people into Russia as "return to the Motherland" and a tribute to the "historical justice and the memory of our ancestors."

In the center of Slovyansk, Eastern Ukraine, a man waves a communist flag in front of a monument to Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin during a Victory Day celebration on May 9, 2014.

A Crimean woman named Yelena, who said her grandfather had been killed in the second world war, called Putin a wise leader and said the new government in Kiev was discriminating against Russian speakers.

"Seeing all this military equipment, we feel such pride and patriotism, we feel ready to give our lives for our country," she said.

Her husband, Roman, said Crimea joining Russia had given residents "hope in a good, dignified future. Crimea has come into Russia's protection; protection against the fascism and economic changes that await Ukraine." [Shades of the old days when Father Stalin made them feel protected in their communist collective ... as Hitler said, that is the nature of the Russian people. -cy]



"Patriotism is in our blood, but now it is waking up," said Mikhail Tkachenko, who was wearing his grandfather's Red Army jacket and said he had previously served in the Ukrainian army. "Freedom is understood differently by everyone. In western Ukraine they understand it differently than we do here."



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Elsewhere, in far western Ukraine, The head of the Lvov veterans association, Timofei Mahanyuk, told Russia Today that, despite the ban, he and many of the veterans will fulfill their duty and pay their respects to their fallen comrades by laying flowers at their graves.

Mahanyuk says that Lvov has become a "breeding ground for Ukrainian Nazism." He says that he and many of his veterans always face the possibility of being attacked. But despite a threat to their well-being, veterans will hold May 9 commemorations.