Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad to draw a new parallel between the war against Nazi Germany in World War II and the current Russian military intervention in Ukraine. “Hitler’s successors want to once again fight Russia on Ukrainian soil,” he said Thursday in Volgograd before a group of army officers and members of patriotic movements.
The head of the Kremlin traveled to this city in the south of European Russia to participate in the commemoration of the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, considered the bloodiest in modern history.
According to the Russian leader, his country is once again threatened by German tanks that have crosses drawn on their bodies.
“Unfortunately we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country. Again and again we have to repel the aggression of the collective West. It is incredible, but the fact is that once again we are threatened by German Leopard tanks with crosses on board, and once again Hitler’s successors will fight on the land of Ukraine,” he said.
During World War II, Hitler’s Germany used Tiger tanks, which were marked with Balkenkreuz crosses, the emblem of the Wehrmacht.
There have been several European countries that have decided to supply Ukraine with these German-made battle tanks. The United States, for its part, will send its Abrams tanks, while the United Kingdom will supply Challenger tanks to Kyiv.
Putin asserted that, on the contrary, Moscow does not send its tanks to the border of those who drag the countries of Europe “into a new war” with Russia.
His country knows “how to respond” and that “the matter does not end with the dispatch of armored vehicles.” And he warned that “the modern war with Russia will be very different for them.”
Shortly before, Putin left flowers before the eternal flame of Mamayev Kurgan, a hill where much of the fighting took place between August 23, 1942 and February 2, 1943. Today the museum complex of the Battle of Stalingrad” and the famous statue “The Motherland Calls!”.
The city, geographically located on the banks of the Volga and Taritsa rivers, bore the name of Taritsyn until 1925, when it was given the name of Stalingrad to honor the new leader of the Soviet Union, Iósif Stalin. In 1961 Nikita Khrushov changed the name to Volgograd as part of the de-Stalinization process.
Due to the symbolic importance in today’s Russia of the Battle of Stalingrad and the victory against the Nazis in World War II, since the end of the USSR there have been several calls to reinstate the name Stalingrad.
Several voices have also been heard now, 80 years after the end of this historic episode. But the Kremlin does not have this issue on its agenda.
“There are no discussions in the administration or with the president in this regard,” Dimitri Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said Thursday. “I want to draw attention to the VTsIOM polls published the day before, which say that the majority of residents” of the city do not share the idea. Therefore, “it is necessary to treat very carefully and weigh all the pros and cons,” added Peskov.
According to the aforementioned survey of the Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), made public on Wednesday, more than two thirds (67%) of the inhabitants of Volgograd are against changing the name of their city.
