Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday said his army is fighting in Ukraine to defend the fatherland against an unacceptable threat posed by the neighboring country supported by the West. Putin told the crowds attending the military parade in Moscow that he ordered the special operation in Ukraine because the Ukrainian authorities were preparing an attack against pro-Russian separatists in the east, because they wanted to develop nuclear weapons and bring NATO to Russia’s doorstep. No foreign leader attended the festivities in Moscow, which marked the victory of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in WWII. In Kyiv, president Volodymyr Zelensky said that “evil has returned to Europe, in a different form, under different slogans, but for the same purpose”, comparing the Russian invasion to the 1941 Nazi invasion.
