"We are celebrating our holiday. This is our holiday. We pay respect to the generation of victors," Putin said.
"The reason why we do so is that the current generation at home and abroad never forgets and never allows anything of the sort to happen in the future."
The lesson of Germany invading Russia is surely one Russia should learn, given that at least 20 million Russians died in that war.
Left unsaid was the lesson of Russia signing an alliance (the Nazi-Soviet Pact) with a growing economic and military power that eventually turned on Russia, leading to those millions of dead Russians.
One day, perhaps historians will write about the Sino-Russian Pact that preceded China's subliminal offensive (on the Crimea and Donbas model) that recaptured Russia's Far East.
On the bright side for Putin, Russia has already purchased more time from China than Stalin managed to buy from Hitler.
But by using that time to push a pointless conflict with the West, does Putin risk even more than that scale of loss?
