France says Russia can be represented but president will not be invited because of war in Ukraine
Russia will be invited to send representatives to an international ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-day – but not Vladimir Putin, the French organisers have announced.
The Élysée is reported to have accepted that the country should be represented but said its leader is not welcome because of Moscow’s ongoing war on Ukraine.
“In view of the circumstances, President Putin will not be invited to take part in the commemorations of the Normandy landings,” the Liberation Mission organising committee said.
The DDay landing was the greatest war event for the Americans, British and Canadians but compared to what happened on the Eastern front, the Russians basically bled themselves and the Germans dry by the time the Allies started fighting again.
I have family that were part of the landings and war veterans that took part in the fighting later on and a couple that are buried in Belgium.
DDay is an amazing story but it shouldn’t be overshadowed by what the Russians and Eastern Europeans endured in the east for almost three years.
The reason I mention this is that to the Russians DDay is not as important a WW2 event to them as it is to us. Putin and Russia won’t be as disrespected as we would like to imagine because they have way more WW2 commemorative events that saw many more people die than they did on DDay.
If Hitler had mustered up just enough wisdom to realize that an invasion of the USSR would be disastrous and managed to contain his hatred of communism just enough to restrain himself from operation Barbarossa, he could likely have held most of Europe and a DDay type landing would have been unlikely to succeed. Nothing short of a nuclear bombardment of Europe would have dislodged them. One of the weirdest darkest historical hypotheticals. It’s amazing how much of history hinges on the personal flaws of specific leaders.
There are archive tapes of Hitler explaining why Germany should invade Russia. Hitler was running out of oil and was sure that Stalin would block access.
Yep. I imagine most nations on the Eastern Front see D-Day as “A group of Allies poked head through backyard doggy door and said, “Oi!” Day.”
The soviets owe their existence to the United States.
The Allies owe their WW2 victory to the Russians
The Russians owe their WW2 victory myth to Ukraine.
Soviets* ;)
Wouldn’t he get arrested?
In theory, that’s up to the French state.
In practice, Putin wouldn’t go to a state that wouldn’t agree to extend diplomatic immunity to him.
And France isn’t going to grant diplomatic immunity and violate it.
So there isn’t really a scenario where he’s going to go and then France is going to arrest him. Either France doesn’t grant diplomatic immunity and he doesn’t enter France, or France does grant diplomatic immunity and he passes through without issue.
How much of a shitshow would it cause if France granted diplomatic immunity, and then the US carried out a special drone delivery operation?
I mean, wouldn’t that be a direct strike against France? NCD would love this.
How much of a shitshow would it cause if France granted diplomatic immunity, and then the US carried out a special drone delivery operation?
why using a drone? Take him to the Eifel tower, I mean it does not have windows but it gets the job done.
“Hey, Vladimir, wanna go up ze Eiffel Tower?”
He most probably would now. During the first stage of the invasion, Macron was amenable to Putin and agreed to meet in person. He’s totally flipped 180 now though, knowing he got played like a damn fool for trusting him.
When the first stage of the invasion started, Macron was the president of Europe. So he had to play his role and present the view of the european leaders, even if it was not aligned with our internal views.
I don’t like him, didn’t vote for him the first time (2nd time i did vote for him to avoid marine le pen election, founded by russian banks btw…) but you can’t use his behavior (amenable), trying to avoid escalation, as “yeah i’m your buddy putin, go ahead” or "i totally trust you’.
Our head of intelligence was fired because HE didn’t present the invasion as realistic (based on normal logic it really silly)… but the whole intel community was fully aware of putin desires. President included. He knew Putin was playing with him. Everybody knew.
But he had to play his role, as EU leader at this time.
Attempting to apply anything resembling personal values to Macron is an error.
If you look up “amoral opportunist” in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Macron smiling as smugly as is humanly possible.
Russia had nothing to do with D-Day anyway.
A more salient point is that Russia was one of the fucking instigators of WW2 and only ended on the winning side through political expedience.
It was Britain and France who enabled Hitler and who ignored Polish warnings.
Fools, invite him and then give him a free visit to The Hague.
