D-Day Snub to Vladimir Putin Echoes Depths of Cold War
US troops disembark from a landing ship on D-Day in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.
Photographer: Robert Sargent/Getty ImagesAs US President Joe Biden joins fellow leaders in Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, there’s one notable absentee.
Vladimir Putin is a past participant in the commemorations, but this year he isn’t welcome due to his ongoing war on Ukraine.
The decision is understandable, but it risks playing into the Russian president’s hands.
For all the talk of remembrance, it’s sometimes conveniently forgotten in the West that Russia is a victorious World War II Allied power along with the likes of the US, UK and France.
The Soviet Union lost some 27 million people in the fight against Nazi Germany. The Battle of Stalingrad was arguably [!] as significant a turning point on the eastern front as D-Day was in the West.
It’s in that capacity that Putin attended the events in France 10 years ago, despite having just been excluded from the Group of 8 nations for his annexation of Crimea that year.
A decade on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is on the guest list while the French organizers decided against issuing an invitation to Putin.
That threatens to fuel Putin’s narrative that the West is ideologically aligned against Russia, and ignores its enormous WWII sacrifices — after all, even German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is invited.
Aside from pictures of the few remaining veterans, the over-riding image from Normandy will be of Western leaders standing against Moscow.
Yet any symbolic isolation of Putin ignores those parts of the world that continue to embrace Russia, for trade, energy, defense or historic and cultural reasons. On Monday, for instance, Russia will host foreign ministers from the ever-expanding BRICS grouping.
At the height of the Cold War in 1984, US President Ronald Reagan attended the first major D-Day commemoration. No Soviet leader was present.
Today’s events signify a return to those days of confrontation.—Alan Crawford