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.
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* ;)
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.