Stalin rejected their entreaties and demanded that they remain in their positions. During the Battle of Kyiv in the late summer of 1941, Soviet military commanders pleaded with Stalin to order a strategic retreat. Throughout World War II, Stalin showed almost no regard for the lives of his own soldiers. When Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, was asked about sexual crimes perpetrated by Russian soldiers in Bucha, he replied that the accusations were mere “lies” and “fabrications.” In Ukraine over the past several weeks, Russian soldiers have earned a similar reputation by engaging in widespread rape, and leaders in the Kremlin once again view the practice with equanimity and have made no effort to curtail it. When Joseph Stalin learned that his soldiers were engaging in mass rape in occupied areas, he made light of it, saying that they were merely “having a little fun.” Soviet soldiers were notorious for raping women in the territories they occupied during and immediately after World War II. Putin has awarded medals of honor to Russian army units that have been implicated in horrendous abuses, just as Soviet leaders did with Red Army forces during World War II. Scenes nowadays from Bucha, Mariupol, Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities show that Russian soldiers over the past 10 weeks have perpetrated atrocities and massacres against civilians in Ukraine. The Red Army engaged in rampant atrocities and massacres during its occupation of eastern Poland, Finland and other East European countries in 1939-1941, and Soviet troops also behaved with indiscriminate cruelty against civilians during sweeps through Eastern Europe in 1944-1945. The house was almost completely destroyed by bombing in late March during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anna Shevchenko, 35, waters the few flowers that survived in the garden of her home in Irpin, near Kyiv, on Tuesday, May 3, 2022. The resistance in Ukraine to the Russian army’s invasion in 2022 has been just as ferocious as the armed opposition the Red Army faced in 1939 when it invaded Poland and Finland. In both Poland and Finland, the Red Army encountered fierce resistance.Ī similar pattern has been evident in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which began in late February, when the Russian army moved in from several directions and sought to overthrow the government and dismember the country. Soon thereafter, Soviet forces moved into Finland, seeking to take it over. World War II began for the Soviet Union in September 1939 when the Red Army marched into eastern Poland and sought to overthrow the government and dismember the country in collusion with Nazi Germany, which occupied western Poland. ![]() These analogies, far from reflecting favorably on either the Red Army or today’s Russian army, underscore the deeply immoral nature of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Putin’s assertions about Nazis in Kyiv are baseless, but there are striking analogies between the way the USSR’s Red Army operated during World War II and the way the Russian army is operating currently against Ukraine. He has claimed, for example, that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis and that soldiers of the Russian army are seeking to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and defend the Russian homeland against nefarious external forces. ![]() Putin’s allusions to that event have helped him bolster public support for his latest war. For the Russian public, the Soviet victory over Germany in 1945 remains a source of immense pride. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly invoked World War II when justifying the invasion he launched of neighboring Ukraine 10 weeks ago. Firefighters extinguish a fire following a Russian bombardment at a park in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 3, 2022.
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