JAKARTA - President Vladimir Putin raised the spirits of the Soviet Union soldiers who defeated Nazi German troops at Stalingrad 80 years ago, to declare Russia would defeat Ukraine, which is thought to be in the grip of a new incarnation of Nazism.
In a heated speech at Volgograd, known as Stalingrad until 1961, President Putin lashed out at Germany for helping to arm Ukraine and said, not for the first time, that he was ready to use all Russian weapons, including nuclear weapons.
"Unfortunately we see that Nazism's ideology in its form and modern manifestation returns directly to threaten the security of our country," President Putin told an audience of military officers and members of the patriotic group and local youth on Thursday's anniversary.
"Repeatedly we have to dispel Western collective aggression. This is extraordinary but that is a fact: we are again threatened with a German Leopard tank with a cross on it," he said.
Russian officials have often compared the invasion of Ukraine to the war against the Nazis, since sending troops a year ago.
Ukraine - which was part of the Soviet Union and suffered destruction at the hands of Hitler's forces - rejected the comparison as a false pretext for the war of conquest of the empire.
President Putin raised what he said was the spirit of the defenders of Stalingrad, to explain why he thought Russia would win in Ukraine, saying the Second World War battle had become a symbol of our "unruled people's nature".
"Those who attract European countries, including Germany, into a new war with Russia, and... expect victory over Russia on the battlefield, do not seem to understand that modern war with Russia will be very different for them," President Putin said.
"We don't send our tanks to their borders, but we have the means to respond, and it won't end up using armored vehicles, everyone has to understand that," he stressed.
President Putin had previously laid flowers on the Soviet erd's tomb overseeing the Stalingrad defense and visited the city's main memorial complex, where he held a moment of silence to honor those who died during the fighting.
Thousands of people marched on the streets of Volgograd to watch the winning parade, as modern aircraft flew overhead and tanks as well as armored vehicles from the Second World War era passed.
Some modern vehicles have paintings of the letters 'V', symbols used by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Irina Zolotoreva, 61, said her relatives had fought in Stalingrad, looking at the similarities with Ukraine.
"Our country is fighting for justice, for freedom. We won in 1942 and that is an example for the current generation. I think we will win again now whatever happens," he said.
The memorial focal point is the Mamayev Kurgan memorial complex, on a hill overlooking the Volga River dominated by a giant statue called The Motherland Calls - a woman brandishing a giant sword.
Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in the Second World War, when the Soviet Red Army, with losses of more than 1 million lives, managed to break the core power of the German invasion in 1942-1943.
The five-month fighting left the city bearing the name of Soviet leader Josef Stalin in ruins, with about 2 million people killed and injured on both sides.
Stalin's new statue was founded in Volgograd on Wednesday along with two other people, Soviet officers Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilyevsky.
Despite Stalin's record of leading to hunger that killed millions of people and political repression that killed hundreds of thousands, Russian politicians and school textbooks in recent years stressed her role as a wartime leader who successfully turned the Soviet Union into a superpower.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
