He said Russian President Vladimir Putin On Wednesday, during a brief speech at a major national festival hosted by the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia is currently fighting in Ukraine for its “historic lands.”
“Today, the (military) leadership told me that battles are taking place within our historical lands for our people,” Putin said on a stage in front of a crowd of tens of thousands of Russians.
Appearing for just a few minutes, the president paid tribute to the Russian servicemen deployed in Ukraine who are “fighting heroically, bravely and valiantly: we are proud of them.” He added that all those who support the Russian army “are themselves defenders of the homeland … medical workers, employees of the defense sector and transport … you are all the ones who came today to support our fighters.”
The authorities organized this national festival in support of the attack in Ukraine. In a temperature below minus 15 degrees, hundreds of attendees waved Russian flags, while patriotic songs and words of soldiers fighting on the Ukrainian front were broadcast on the podium.
The festival, organized under the slogan “Glory to the Defenders of the Fatherland”, comes on the eve of the day of the same name and two days before the first anniversary of Russia’s attack on its neighboring country.
And children from the Ukrainian region of Donbass, especially from the city of Mariupol (southeast), climbed to the podium and hugged a Russian soldier who shouted in front of the crowd: “We will win!” Russia is accused kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children From the lands it occupies, which it denies, considering that these areas are Russian and that it organized legal adoptions.
The famous singer Grigory Leps opened the concert with a patriotic song glorifying Russia, coinciding with the display of images of the “Motherland Calling” statue located in Volgograd (former Stalingrad) on screens in the stadium.
Officials from the Russian occupation authorities from Ukrainian regions were also present inside the stadium, and they gave interviews to Russian official media. “The West is complicit in Ukrainian war crimes,” said Denis Pushilin, the pro-Russian separatist leader in the Donetsk region, condemning the “Nazi ideology” of the Ukrainian authority.
Putin justifies his decision to stir up the most dangerous conflict in Europe since 1945 by accusing Kiev of masterminding the “genocide” of the Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. He also considers Westerners who hand over weapons to their Ukrainian ally responsible for the escalation, and that Europeans and Americans are waging a proxy war to try to destroy Russia.
In the face of major field setbacks, the Kremlin now considers the attack in Ukraine equivalent to the “Great Patriotic War” once morest Nazi Germany.
France 24/AFP
