Putin attacked Ukraine and the Baltics

Vladimir Putin described his war against Ukraine as a fight against Nazism at a memorial event. The Kremlin leader cited Ukraine and the Baltic states as current examples of the rise of Nazism.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described his war of aggression against Ukraine as a fight against Nazism at the commemoration. “We are doing everything, everything, to stop Nazism and finally eradicate it,” he said, according to media reports, as he unveiled a memorial to the public victims of fascist terror on Saturday after Hitler's Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The Kremlin leader cited Ukraine and the Baltic states as current examples of the rise of Nazism.

He said the Baltic states “are dehumanizing tens of thousands of people, depriving them of their basic rights and subjecting them to hate speech”. Ukraine “heroizes Hitler's henchmen and SS men and uses terror against people they don't like,” Putin continued. The Kremlin has repeatedly justified its nearly two-year war of aggression against Ukraine, allegedly to protect the Russian-speaking population living there from attacks by Ukrainian nationalists. In Russia, anti-war protesters and members of the opposition face severe repression.

Putin attended the opening of a World War II monument near St. Petersburg on Saturday with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. 80 years ago, on January 27, 1944, Soviet troops broke the encirclement ring closed by the German Wehrmacht around Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. In doing so, she ended one of the worst war crimes. During the nearly 900 days of the German siege, more than a million people died in the city from bombing, hunger and cold.

dpa/tcar