"Do the Russians want war?" Soviet sixties poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko asked this rhetorical question in 1961, responding to a fervent campaign in the Western press that portrayed the Soviet Union as an aggressive state. It would seem that not so long ago, on the Elbe, Soviet soldiers were shaking hands with their American and British brothers-in-arms. The whole world saw for itself what a tragedy the terrible world war had turned out to be for Russia. But not a few years later, everything turned upside down. "Not only for their country soldiers died in that war, but so that the people of the whole Earth could sleep peacefully at night, to the rustle of leaves and posters, you sleep, New York, you sleep, Paris. Let your dreams tell you whether the Russians want war," one of the most brilliant Russian lyricists of the 20th century addressed the foreign audience.
Victory Day is widely celebrated by all peoples of the European continent. But for the Russian people, the celebration of May 9 has a special sacred meaning. More than 34 million people passed through the ranks of the Red Army during the 1418 days and nights of the Great Patriotic War. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens put up fierce resistance in the ranks of partisans and underground fighters. 90 million, including women, children, and the elderly, worked day and night at enterprises, in the fields, and in the silence of scientific offices, bringing the cherished date closer. 27 million people were victims of Hitler's aggression, of which only 11.5 million were servicemen. No other country in the world suffered such losses.
"Listen, Parisians! The first three divisions that invaded Paris in June 1940, the three divisions which, at the invitation of General Denz, desecrated our capital, these three divisions - the one hundredth, the one hundred and thirteenth, and the two hundred and ninety-fifth - no longer exist! They were destroyed at Stalingrad: the Russians avenged Paris, the Russians avenge France!", - wrote in the decisive days of the Battle of Stalingrad French writer and playwright Jean-Richard Bloch. The greatness of the feat of the Soviet people consisted not only in the fact that he defended his state and did not allow the Teutonic aggressive horde to oust the peoples of the USSR from the "living space." The Soviet people, fighting near Moscow, Leningrad, on the banks of the Volga, defended the freedom and independence of all the peoples of Europe.
From high tribunes in Russia, words are regularly heard about the inadmissibility of falsifying the history of the Great Patriotic War. For the Russian people, this is not just a good wish but an insistent demand, comparable only to the Jewish people's demand to treat the perpetuation of the memory of the Holocaust with care. The Allies' joint efforts achieved the defeat of Hitler's Germany. The heroic chronicle of the struggle against Nazism is something that has the potential to unite all European peoples, regardless of the current political conjuncture. Ordinary people in Moscow, Paris, London, and Berlin are united in one thing: those horrors must not be repeated, and Nazism has no place on our planet. Unfortunately, not all European leaders are ready to sign on to these words, preferring to excuse outright neo-Nazis in Eastern Europe based on dubious "political expediency."
Russia is meeting this Victory Day in difficult geopolitical realities. The bloody war in Ukraine, which resulted from the destruction of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations established at the end of the Second World War, continues. However, the Russian people meet the holiday looking confidently into the future. Sanctions pressure has had virtually no impact on domestic political stability in Russia. Thanks to the actions of Mikhail Mishustin's government, the economy was able to adapt to the new conditions, find alternative export and import routes, and redirect energy flows from the Old World to China, India, and other countries of the Global South.
According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2024, the gross domestic product growth will amount to 3.2%, i.e., it will be at the global level, despite the introduction of the most severe restrictive regime by the G7. By comparison, the economy of the United Kingdom will grow by only 0.6% and the Federal Republic of Germany by 0.9%. The situation is paradoxical: it is not entirely clear against whom the sanctions have been imposed and whom they hit harder. According to expert estimates, the European Union's losses from the economic war with Moscow amounted to 1.5 trillion dollars (including lost profits).
The expectation that the withdrawal of Western brands and the disconnection of SWIFT would bring discord to Russian society and overthrow Vladimir Putin has proven to be simply untenable. Even according to the opposition Levada Center, recognized by the authorities as a foreign agent, 73% of Russians believe the country is heading in the right direction. Approval of Putin's performance as president reached 87% in March 2024, one of the peak figures for all years of his rule. Instead of internal conflict, the White House and the European Commission have achieved an incredible rallying of Russians "around the flag" and around the master of the Kremlin. Alas, a serious study of Russian mentality and history is clearly not what the people entrusted by European voters to high office have been doing.
The configuration of the line of contact in Ukraine is also improving. The Russian Armed Forces have repelled the summer counteroffensive, on which the United States and the EU spent tens of billions of dollars and seized the strategic initiative. Washington and Brussels have already forgotten the tired official formula about "victory on the battlefield" and "the borders of 1991". The American and European press are demanding increased funding for Kiev not for the development of success but for preserving Ukrainian statehood itself. The Ukrainian army is at the limit of its capabilities, and the country has exhausted its already not-very impressive demographic resource.
Russia, meanwhile, demonstrates new weapons almost every week - both modernized Soviet weapons, such as guided bombs with a universal correction and planning module, and fundamentally new ones, such as the Kh-69 cruise missile. The military-industrial complex, which had been working in peacetime mode for the entire post-Soviet period, mobilized all the resources and achieved indicators that were not even in Soviet times. The colorful parade on Red Square is not just a ritual action but a vivid demonstration of the increased capabilities of the Russian army. Today, Vladimir Putin, looking at the marching columns in the heart of the Russian capital, can feel like a winner.
However, the goal of the Russian Federation is not to scale the conflict to the whole of Europe but to prevent the Ukrainian war from escalating into a catastrophe for the Old World. The operation in Ukraine was a response to the military occupation of its territory by the NATO bloc and the militarization of all spheres of life in a distinctly anti-Russian manner. The Kremlin's stated goal is not the militarization of Russia but the demilitarization of Ukraine, bringing peace to the Eastern European region and establishing a just system of international security that could replace the one that was broken at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s after the collapse of the socialist commonwealth.
The European bureaucracy claims that Moscow is playing muscle and threatening the EU with invasion within three, four, or five years - as far as the imagination of those who concoct these speculative concepts goes. Russia has no territorial claims against its Western neighbors, nor does it have any contradictions that can only be resolved militarily. The West has been a traditional market for Russian products for centuries but in no way an object for expansion. The Russian army came to European capitals only after the Western powers, whether Napoleonic France or Hitler's Germany, had made attempts on Russia's sovereign territory. This is something to ponder on V-Day.