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Victory day ukraine5/30/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Victory Day parades and celebrations were cancelled in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while Kyrgyzstan's State National Security Committee (GKNB) banned the use of the pro-invasion "Z" symbol. This year, however, several Central Asian countries avoided major celebrations following Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and war crimes committed by Russian troops. The ability of Zelenskyy to be this wartime leader and Putin unable to do that to any real degree is a stark comparison.BERLIN - Celebrations of Victory Day held by Russians living in Europe this year demonstrated the reach of Kremlin propaganda abroad amid Russia's continued invasion of Ukraine.Īll former Soviet states, including Ukraine, mark May 9 to celebrate the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. The contrast just couldn’t be starker with Putin. They’re doing everything they can to support him. ![]() To make sure the troops know that he’s there with them. “We’ve seen from President Zelenskyy the ability to rise to the occasion as a wartime leader, to show bravery too. James Goldgeier ( Bosch Senior Visiting Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe There’s no new threats in there and there are really no meaningful, useful, or beneficial targets for the use of a nuclear weapon in this conflict in western Ukraine or otherwise that that make that would help Putin achieve his end of annexing parts or all of Ukraine.” Fortunately, the speech was a whole lot of nothing in terms of saber rattling. The West not wanting to antagonize, aggravate, or otherwise irritate Putin and standing back to see what he’s going to do next. The nuclear saber rattling has been front and center coming from Russia during this conflict, almost setting the United States and the West back on its heels in what would seem to have given him first-mover advantage early in the conflict. Rubenstein Fellow, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology This is going to make it very hard, I believe, for Western leaders to engage in a normal way with Vladimir Putin.”Īmy J. At this point in time, I don’t see how you build a architecture that both sides can sign on to and in particular with, again, as word of war crimes and atrocities. But the Russians really didn’t put much into that effort. Going back to the 1990s and even in 2002 and Putin himself agreed at the Rome 2002 NATO-Russia summit to try to work to build a better NATO-Russia relationship. Finland and Sweden, two countries who have embraced neutrality for decades, are very likely in the next six weeks to formally apply to join NATO because they calculate that their security interests will be better served within NATO. “What Russia has done in the last eight years, but in particular in the last 11 weeks with this unjustified, unprovoked military assault on Ukraine, has galvanized NATO. Steven Pifer ( Senior Fellow, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology and Center on the United States and Europe And a lot of these families are asking, ‘How did my son die? What happened?’” But the one thing that was noticeable was the acknowledgment that there have been heavy casualties and reaching out to the families of the dead soldiers and saying that there will be financial compensation for them, which there has been all along, but at least acknowledging the fact that there are these losses because the body bags are coming back, the funerals are happening. And we see no prospect of any negotiations, at least from Russia’s point of view. But of course, the brutality is absolutely staggering. In other words, this grinding war that’s continuing where the Russians are trying to take the entire Donbas but are not having much success, the Ukrainians are pushing them back. I think what it means is Putin made it clear they’re going to succeed. He reiterated the talking points that we’ve had almost since the beginning, that this was a preemptive war to protect Russian-controlled territories, Crimea and the Donbas, from being taken back, from being overrun by the Ukrainian Nazis and NATO. We got a very aggressive speech from Putin. “There was a lot of speculation that we were either going to hear this is all out war or we were even going to hear maybe it’s time to sit down and negotiate, mission accomplished. ![]()
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