Posted on 04/23/2015 12:30:41 PM PDT by WhiskeyX
KIEV, April 22 (Reuters) - Ukraine, in a break with tradition that is certain to rile Moscow, is ditching the Soviet name for World War Two and aims to adopt the poppy, a mainly British wartime symbol, to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.
[....]
In another break with the Soviet past, Kiev will align its calendar with that of its European allies by adding for the first time May 8 - known in the West as Victory in Europe Day - as a national holiday.
A decree signed by President Petro Poroshenko fixed May 8 as a day for reconciliation between those Ukrainians who fought only the Nazis with those who, after the war, went on to fight Soviet rule also.
[....]
Yatseniuk, whose government is set on a programme of integration into the European mainstream following the ousting of a Moscow-backed president in February 2014, urged people to wear a poppy during the May victory celebrations in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. He described it as a "European symbol".
"Let all the other ribbons be worn by the Russian Federation which claims it was Russia that won the Second World War," Yatseniuk said.
Yatseniuk's phrasing made clear he supported proposals to drop the Soviet name Great Patriotic War to describe the conflict against Nazi Germany that in the West is generally referred to as the Second World War or World War Two.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“Ukraine, in snub to Moscow, to adopt British war-time symbol, ditch Soviet war name”
Which can be classified as “the last great act of defiance.”
I think the alarmists have greatly exaggerated any threat from Russia. When they annexed Crimea I assumed they would go for a land corridor in Eastern Ukraine to connect them. They stripped central Asia of their best units to help the supposed “rebels”. After a year they have failed to open a corridor, hold less than 5% or the Ukraine, and have to hide the deaths of their soldiers from their own people. The idea that they are about to overrun other countries is pretty far fetched, though I’m sure Putin dreams of being able to do so.
Putin played the long game in Chechnya and ultimately succeeded because the Russian people were willing to keep paying the price. The Ukrainians aren’t hijacking Russian airplanes, seizing theaters full of people, or slaughtering elementary school children though.
Chechnya was always a part of the Russian Federation. Ukraine never was.
Noting Putin or his Freeper fan club of misguided dolts can say will make Ukrainians prefer the return of Soviet authoritarianism under the moron Putin. He may be able to threaten nuclear war and scare bed-wetting liberals but he cannot change the hearts and minds of those who’d prefer a free and self governing republic to foreign Putinist domination. Yeah, I know, Putinistas, only fags and Nazis, in your mind, don’t want to let Putin run their lives.
Chechnya was annexed by Russia in the 1820's, became independent after the Bolshevik coup, then was reabsorbed in 1921. Ukraine became part of the Russian empire in 1654. Are you getting hung up on names like "republik" and "oblast"? Those are just words. The Ukrainians were and are far more integrated with the Russians than the Chechens ever were.
Going on hard against communism, or soft against Nazism? “The Great Patriotic War” supposes that fighting on the side of the Soviets, Britain and the United States was patriotic. But the Ukraine had a lot of collaborationist and Nazi wanna-bes. And Russia argues that the backbone of the new junta includes a lot of people who glorify the anti-Soviet but pro-Nazi fighters of WWII. Contrarily, “World War II” is a morally neutral name.
No, I’m talking about during the Soviet period and post-Soviet period. When the USSR broke up Chechnya was part of Russia and Ukraine wasn’t. Even during the Soviet period the Ukraine had a separate seat at the UN. There’s a fundamental difference between keeping a part of your own country and taking a part or all of someone else’s.
Of course the Ukrainians who fought for the Nazis considered themselves patriots too. After all the Soviets had deliberately starved to death at least 10 million Ukrainians just a few years before. That’s why the Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis, at least until they proved themselves just a brutal as the Communists.
WW2 took place from 1939 - 1945. “The Great Patriotic War” is a construct invented in Soviet Union where they erase the first two years they were allied with the Nazis from existence and thus starts in 1941.
I don’t even want to address your repeating nazi-junta blabber.
I don’t think the Chechens thought they were part of Russia. Let’s not forget that the Soviet special forces commander who refused Gorbachev’s order to open fire on civilians in the baltic was a Chechen. Gorbachev fired him for that. He then went back to Chechnya, got himself elected, and promptly seceded. As far as the Chechens were concerned, they weren’t doing anything any different from what the Baltic states were doing. Let’s also remember that the Chechens initially won their independence from Russia. They would still be independent today if they hadn’t foolishly tried to pick off Ingushetia and Daghestan, prompting Putin to re-invade.
Pskov airborne obeyed, but it was farther from Tallinn and it took longer for them to get there. That delay proved very luckily and no one died in Tallinn although it got very tense (In January same year Soviet forces had killed 14 civilians defending Vilnius TV tower). The Tallinn defenders were up in the tower with light weapons and grenades. They had disabled the elevator and threatened that when they can no longer defend the stairs they will turn on the anti-fire system that fills the whole tower with some anti-fire gas and kills everyone inside it. That held the airborne troops back long enough so that the Putchists lost.
This picture is from in front of Tallinn TV tower that day with people blocking the airborne troops.
“Going on hard against communism, or soft against Nazism?”
Ask Putin, because his father reportedly served as a turncoat Cossack Lieutenant in Vlasov’s Russian volunteers for the German NAZI Army as they murdered countless Polish, Jewish, and other people on behalf of Hitler’s NAZI Germany.
““The Great Patriotic War” supposes that fighting on the side of the Soviets, Britain and the United States was patriotic.”
That is quite wrong. Even today you can go to the Russian encyclopedia entry for “the Great Patriotic War” published by RT and find not one word in the article acknowledging any role whatsoever played by Britain, France, and the United States in winning the patriotic defeat of NAZI Germany. You certainly will not find them ever mentioning how the Western allies accomplished more to defeat NAZI Germany than Russia ever did. You also wind no mention of how Russia was a co-conspirator and ally of NAZI Germany in beginning the war in the period 1939-1941. Nowhere to be found in the Russian history of the war is story of how Russia was also responsible for killing up to one fourth of all the Allied military personnel killed in the war.
“But the Ukraine had a lot of collaborationist and Nazi wanna-bes.”
After Russia had just committed the Holodomor genocide against the Ukrainians in which millions of Ukrainians were murdered by the Russians, the survivors of the Russian murders had little choice but to seek help to survive from the first enemy of Russia to come along who could possibly help them, sometimes like Putin’s father.
“And Russia argues that the backbone of the new junta includes a lot of people who glorify the anti-Soviet but pro-Nazi fighters of WWII.”
Russia is a proven liar and a bunch of genocidal maniacs. The accusation that today’s Ukrainian government is a junta is yet another example of Russian lies, false propaganda, and disinformation being used to resume the mass murders of Ukrainians that Russia left unfinished before the so-called Great Patriotic War interrupted the genocidal exterminations of the Ukrainians by the Russians.
But I'd be interesting in reading how Russia was responsible for killing up to one fourth of all the allied military personnel.
>>>> But the Ukraine had a lot of collaborationist and Nazi wanna-bes.
>> After Russia had just committed the Holodomor genocide against the Ukrainians in which millions of Ukrainians were murdered by the Russians,
Absolutely true. But the problem is that Ukrainian nazi-wanna-bes ai was referring was Swaboda. Their idols were far less interesting in liberating Russia than they were in convincing Hitler that they'd make good little Nazis by killing all the Poles and Jews they could get their hands on. THey were formed in the 1990s as the Socialist-Nationalist Party.
“I don’t know who to believe, the Ukrainian propaganda I first found when reading about Putin’s father, or the Wikipedia entry on Vlasov, but it seems that Vlasov might gave been the closest thing to a good guy in the USSR-Nazi conflict, if not purely an opportunist whose opportunities led him to taking a good-guy posture.”
The source is a Russian, Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun), who is a former GRU officer who defected to the British in 1978. He wrote how he found the information about Putin’s father defecting to NAZI Germany in 1941 from the Soviet NKVD in the British intelligence files and photograph/s while researching one of his publications. The Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and assorted other people have only cited his works. So, you cannot blame the reports, whether they are valid or invalid, upon the Ukrainians in an effort to smear them. If anything should ever prove to be incorrect about the report the responsibility goes back to Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun), a former Russian GRU agent.
“There’s even a memorial to him in New York.”
Hitler did not want to allow the formation and employment of a Russian liberation army and took action to deny Vlasov any effective capability of doing so until events in 1944 allowed some minimal combat participation by Vlasov and his own units. The Vlasov memorial in the United States is a religious and private marker erected by Russian expatriates.
Hitler and Germany did employ some of Vlasov’s followers in a variety of capacities, including the NAZI led killing of the Poles, Jews, and others. The Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun) publication/s report Putin’s father is one of the officers serving the Germans as they destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto and massacred the people therein.
“But I’d be interesting in reading how Russia was responsible for killing up to one fourth of all the allied military personnel.”
When the Western Allies could no longer stomach the way Stalin and his Soviets were murdering thousands of the Soviet POWs and other people upon their debarkation from the Allied ships repatriating them to the Crimean and other ports, Stalin refused to repatriate the British Commonwealth and American troops who had been captured in the German POW camps. Instead, Stalin either immediately killed them or killed them while being used as slave labor in the Gulag Archipelago. It is noteworthy that many of the Soviet lives which were spared by the refusal of the British and Americans to forcibly repatriate Soviet POWs who would then be murdered as they got off the ships included a large number of Soviet Ukrainians. Many of these Soviet POWs committed mass suicide in the West when it appeared they could not persuade the British not forcibly repatriate them to the Soviets.
The United States suffered something on the order of 291,000 military deaths in WWII, and the Soviet Union (Russia) may have been responsible for something on the order of 25,000 of those deaths. The British Commonwealth forces may have lost as many as around 36,000 POWs to the Soviet enslavement and deaths.
“Absolutely true. But the problem is that Ukrainian nazi-wanna-bes ai was referring was Swaboda. Their idols were far less interesting in liberating Russia than they were in convincing Hitler that they’d make good little Nazis by killing all the Poles and Jews they could get their hands on. THey were formed in the 1990s as the Socialist-Nationalist Party.”
Russian propagandists have been doing everything in their power to distract attention away from the Russian crimes and Russian neo-NAZIism which far outnumber and commit far more atrocities than anything that can be found in the Ukraine. So, the constant smearing of the Ukrainian people and government for the existence of neo-NAZIs in the Ukraine is a hypocritical scheme being used to massacre even more Ukrainians and steal their land, freedom, and assets. Small numbers of neo-NAZIs can be found in a wide variety of nations around the world, but few of them can compare in numbers or ongoing atrocities to those in today’s Russia and today’s Russian Government. The Ukraine’s neo-NAZIs are a problem, but they are a tiny problem when compared to the Russian neo-NAZIs, who comprise something on the order of half the entire world’s total neo-NAZIs, and are actively being unleashed to overthrow the Russian government and kill Ukrainians, Jews, and a wide assortment of other people today. This is also why the report about Putin’s father serving Hitler’s NAZI Germany in the eradication of the Warsaw Ghetto is so alarming to so many people in Eastern Europe and around the world.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.