Anton: "What we did hear a lot about was the portance of this dayi look for russia. Gatmiatisosorapeteogod" He says that 27 million soviet citizens died in world war too. Every single family essentially has a history of grandparents who fought in the war, he adds.
For years, President Vladimir V. Putin has taken advantage of Victory Day — when Russians commemorate the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany — to champion his country’s military might and project himself as a leader of enormous power.
This year, he drew on the pageantry of May 9 for an even more pressing goal: making the case for the war in Ukraine.
Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.
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