Why should Australians bother about a faraway solemn national ceremony, Russia’s Victory Parade in Moscow on 9 May to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the final defeat of Fascist Germany?
I suggest we should pay tribute on this day to the heroism of the Russian people, soldiers and civilians alike, for their huge sacrifices and sufferings in our common cause of defeating Nazism, in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War and we call World War II.
Many Western heads of government including George Bush and Gerhard Schroder attended the 60th anniversary event ten years ago, out of solidarity and respect. But the coming event is being boycotted by NATO and EU countries. This boycott is being hailed by NATO policy wonks as a great success.
The rationale – mostly specious – is entirely linked to opposing Russian policy in Ukraine. The boycott is intended to send Mr Putin the sharpest possible message regarding Western anger over Russia’s incorporation of Crimea and continuing diplomatic and military support of the East Ukrainian rebel territories.
Who designed this offensive and fruitless strategy? Only blind Freddie could believe it was spontaneous. More likely is that it was orchestrated by the same people who have led US covert efforts over the past few years to detach Ukraine from Russian influence and instead incorporate it into NATO’s sphere.
Russia has been in no way intimidated or deflected from its foreign policy by this strategy of attempted regime change in Ukraine: quite the contrary, as this recent English-subtitled Russian documentary Crimea: the Way Home makes clear. (However it should be noted that there are incidents here that have never been properly reported in our Western press, and westerners will need to make their own judgement as to their accuracy).
This is not an essay about Ukraine: it is a critique of a hamfisted, gratuitously offensive diplomacy that ignores adverse consequences.
It was open to NATO governments to say to the Russian government: we disagree strongly with your present policies on Ukraine, and our economic sanctions against you will therefore continue. But we were strong allies in defeating Hitler’s Germany in World War II, and as a mark of respect for the Russian people’s huge sacrifices in that war, we will attend and share with you at appropriately high political level those bittersweet memories on this important day 9 May. Diplomacy 101, I would have thought?
But no: it was thought necessary to send Putin