May 9: March of the Immortal Regiment

 

In 2019 the Global Network organized a Russia Study Tour that took us to Moscow, Crimea and St. Petersburg.

We were in St. Petersburg on May 9 and our delegation of 22 people joined the annual 'March of the Immortal Regiment' that honored those 30 million Soviet citizens who fought and died during the WW2 Nazi invasion. People carried photos of their relatives from that horrid war. 

(In comparison the U.S. lost about 407,000 troops in WW2.)

In the photo above some of our delegation are featured. I am carrying a photo of my two uncles who were in the U.S. navy and had their ships sunk by the Nazis. Miraculously they both survived the ordeal but died at a fairly young age. Some in the family believed they died from the legacy of the war trauma.

 

On that day of May 9, 2019 it was reported that 1.2 million people marched in the St. Petersburg event. It was an amazing experience for all of us. (These marches took place all over Russia and in many cities of the former Soviet Union.)

After the march was over we had to take the long walk back along the famous Nevsky Prospect to our hotel. I played a game by counting how many pieces of trash I saw along our return walk. I counted not more than five. I imagined a similar sized crowd marching in the U.S. and thought of the truckloads of trash that would have to be picked up afterward. 

The whole experience taught me alot about the character of the Russian people. First, and most important, they have not forgotten the massive sacrifices they made to defeat the Nazis. Virtually every family in Russia lost loved ones during that period. They know what war is really like - something the American people have no real clue about.

 

It should also be remembered that during the last 500 years Russia has repeatedly been invaded by European nations. (During 1918 with the help of the U.S.).

Just about every 100 years Europe has attacked Russia attempting to take control of their vast resource base. Sweden (multiples times), France, Germany, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Britain and now the U.S. and NATO, using Nazified Ukraine as the excuse and the proxy, in the attempt to take western control of Russia.

The Russians are very clear about the Nazis. They know them well and have a deep commitment (after the loss of 30 million in WW2) to never let it happen again. That is why after the US-EU orchestrated coup in Kiev in 2014 Russia knew that soon enough war would be coming their way once again.

For eight years Russia did its best to dissuade the western nations from their attacks on the Russian-ethnic Donbass region in eastern Ukraine - right along the Russian border. But eventually, after at least 15,000 were killed and 35,000 were wounded, Moscow knew they had to intervene and did so in 2022 with the Special Military Operation.

The big question these days, as Ukraine's war on the Donbass is collapsing, how will the U.S.-NATO react? Will they send in troops from Poland, Romania, France, Germany and from other NATO states? Or will NATO acknowledge that the 500 year western colonial dream of taking over Russia has again failed?

Let's hope and pray Washington, London and Brussels finally wake up and back-off before our current version of WW3 takes a turn for the worse.

Bruce