(Paris) It is a resounding absence: Russia, one of the great victorious countries of Nazism, now a pariah on the international scene, will not be represented at the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the Landing, excluded because of its aggression against ‘Ukraine.
No official representing Vladimir Putin’s government has been invited by France, where the commemorations are being held. But no representative of the Russian opposition or civil society is either, when the USSR, allied with Great Britain and the United States against Nazi Germany, nevertheless suffered the heaviest losses human losses of the Second World War, with at least 20 million deaths.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country has been facing a deadly invasion launched by Russia for more than two years, was on the other hand invited, as if to indicate the extent to which the Allies consider that Moscow is on the wrong side of the History.
US President Joe Biden, England’s King Charles III and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, representing the three great nations who landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, and some 200 surviving veterans of this page of history are the guests of honor of President Emmanuel Macron.
For some Russian dissidents, the exclusion of representatives of Vladimir Putin’s regime is legitimate, but they do not understand that it applies to the country as a whole.
“It is not normal that representatives of Russia, which sacrificed millions of men in this war, are not present” at the commemorations, Lev Ponomarev, famous dissident and co-founder of Memorial, an NGO, told AFP. Russian human rights defender, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
“The representatives of fascist Russia do not have to be there. But I believe that the opposition could and should have been there,” laments the 82-year-old dissident, who went into exile in France after the invasion of Ukraine.
“We represent Russia which defeated Nazism, if only because we spoke out against Putin’s fascism,” he believes.
“Russia’s absence will be used by Russian propaganda, and shown as a humiliation of the Russian people,” agrees Olga Prokopieva, head of the Russia-Libertés association based in Paris.
In April, Paris indicated that Russian officials – but not Putin – would be invited to the ceremonies in Normandy, in the name of the Soviet Union’s contribution, on the Eastern Front, to the victory against Germany.
Ultimately, Paris decided not to invite any Russian representatives, due to its “war of aggression” against Ukraine.
Russia-Libertés wrote to President Macron to suggest that he invite members of the Russian opposition and civil society, such as Yulia Navalnaia, the widow of the famous opponent Alexei Navalny, who died in prison last February, or Evgenia Kara- Mourza, the wife of Vladimir Kara-Mourza, in prison for her opposition to the war in Ukraine.
But the association did not succeed, even if President Macron received Ms. Navalnaia at the Élysée last weekend.
Paris said the USSR’s “decisive contribution” to victory over Nazism would be mentioned during ceremonies at Omaha Beach and during “demonstrations” planned at cemeteries where Russian soldiers rest in France.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied any discussion in recent months about Russian participation. “We have had no contact on this issue,” he said.
Russian journalist Dmitry Mouratov, co-founder of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, believes that the only significant presence at the commemorations is that of veterans of the Second World War.
And the only question that matters, for him, is to stop Russian aggression against Ukraine. He appeals to veterans to appeal for a ceasefire, “in memory of those who died for peace during the Second World War.”
“These are the people who have the legitimacy to demand from Putin and the world that the fighting stops,” he says.
Historically, the American offensive of 1944 generated tensions with the Kremlin, which believed that it took too long to materialize.
The Soviet Union “virtually fought alone” against Nazi Germany “during the three long and difficult years of the Great Patriotic War,” Vladimir Putin recently estimated.
He had attended the 60th anniversary celebrations in 2004, alongside Jacques Chirac, as well as those of the 70th in 2014 at the invitation of François Hollande, despite the annexation three months earlier of Crimea by Russia.
The master of the Kremlin, quick to claim this heritage, has also regularly justified the offensive against Ukraine since 2022 by the need to “denazify” this former Soviet republic.