Irish Examiner view: Cult of victory all that's left to Putin

Many Russians remembering their country's great Second World War victory did so in ignorance of what Putin is perpetrating in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow to mark the 77th anniversary of the end of the Second World War II. Picture: Anton Novoderezhkin/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/AP

It seems that for Russian President Vladimir Putin the cult of victory is all that is left to him and his cabal of supporters.

Yesterday’s strangely hollow Victory Day celebrations in Moscow — all military parades, marching bands, and flag-waving, but no airforce fly-over — saw the man who has orchestrated Europe’s biggest tragedy since 1945 celebrate Russia’s victory over Nazism and autocracy in that same year. Sadly, many of those remembering Russia’s great Second World War victory did so in ignorance of what Putin and those stony-faced generals surrounding him in Red Square are perpetrating in Ukraine in the name of fallen heroes. They were left to believe the administration’s claims that Ukraine is the home of “executioners, punishers, and Nazis” and its citizens were nothing other than “Nazi filth”.

Those Russians are indifferent to the crimes being committed in Mariupol, Bucha, Kramatorsk, Odesa, Popasna, Kharkiv, and other Ukrainian cities because Putin and his ruling elite have obliterated free speech, objective journalism, and social media there, forcing the population to swallow whole the lies being fed to them on a daily basis by approved media outlets.

They are only allowed digest Putin’s claims that Russia was forced into war by Nato aggression and the threat of an attack on Crimea. His assertion that Russia was not the
aggressor, and its military were somehow fighting a "sacred" war, left nothing to the imagination of many Russian citizens who have little option but to believe the delusional propaganda. Unfortunately, for those with no access to media other than that which is government controlled, it is still easier
to believe in Victory Day myths than it is to reach the conclusion that their president is a lost and increasingly isolated soul with a nuclear suitcase in his hands.

Yesterday, Putin tried to inculcate the cult of victory, in which he so obviously believes wholeheartedly, into the souls of the Russian people. Only time will tell if he succeeded.