The Real Forever War
Russia's Cult of Never-Ending Violence
While the free world celebrates Europe Day, fascist Moscow toasts invasion, occupation and war – an unending destructive impunity that has been Moscow’s calling card for six centuries.
Moscow and St. Petersburg were built on conquest.
After 1918, the Bolsheviks re-conquered most of this empire.
In 1945, six years of Nazi occupation bled into 46 years of Soviet repression.
But with central Europe free of Soviet occupation and the EU and NATO expanding, G7 leaders joined the 50th anniversary ceremony in 1995:
(Clinton and Chrétien with China’s Jiang and the UK’s John Major on Red Square)
Even before becoming president, Putin re-launched genocidal war in Chechnya. In 2000, his inauguration was on May 7th, so few guest attended on May 9th.
(Putin with Bush, Chirac and China’s Hu on Red Square on May 9th 2005)
But in 2005, even after Moscow levelled Chechnya and backed Iran’s proxies in Iraq, US president George W. Bush, France’s Chirac, Germany’s Schröder, Italy’s Berlusconi and Japan’s Koizumi came to Moscow on ‘Victory Day’.
Even after Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, which made clear Putin’s ambition to restore Moscow’s empire by force, German chancellor Angela Merkel attended in 2010 – and was the last G7 leader to do so. She went back to Moscow to lay a wreath on May 10th, 2015 – over a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had begun.
The 2020 parade was postponed due to COVID; once again, few leaders attended. At the 2015 and 2025 parades, China’s chairman Xi and Egypt’s president Sisi were top guests. India’s president came in 2015; Brazil’s Lula joined this year. (Lula was out of office in 2015 but both he and Sisi consider Russia a strategic partner.)
(Today’s parade on Red Square in Moscow)
These foreign guests now perpetuate Moscow’s cult of endless war – a blatant display of fascist power bent on re-conquering empire, starting with Ukraine.
In this ugly quest, Xi is now the Kremlin’s main ally.
(Trump and Xi on Red Square today)
After destroying Ukraine with help from China, North Korea and Iran, Moscow dreams of re-dividing the world into spheres of influence, as Stalin did at Yalta with Churchill and Roosevelt. On Yalta’s recent anniversary, there was an art exhibition in occupied Crimea, near where the ‘big three’ had met, with this:
It’s a grotesque vision. But for the Kremlin, Trump remains their best hope of salvaging a disastrous war. Why? Look back at our essay on ‘Trump & Russia’.
Despite incontrovertible evidence of Russia’s long-term cultivation, manipulation and exploitation of Trump – even in 2016, David Remnick spoke of a ‘love story’ with the two “locked in a humid political embrace” – Americans re-elected him.
At the same time, military support for Ukraine is growing. Neither Trump nor his envoy turned up today on Red Square. Just as Moscow wants to kick its forever invasion into high gear, its war machine is sputtering, its double is struggling and Ukrainian drones are closing Moscow airports.
With the right leadership delivering full military support for Ukraine, democracies can defeat Russia — and end a forever war that has cost the world so much.