The Spectator

Read: Vladimir Putin’s victory day speech in full

The following is The Spectator’s translation of Putin’s speech for victory day 2022.

Most respected citizens of Russia, dear veterans, comrade soldiers and sailors, sergeants and petty officers, midshipmen and ensigns, comrade officers, generals and admirals: I wish you all a happy great victory day! The defense of our homeland – when its fate hung in the balance – has always been sacred. With such feelings of genuine patriotism, Minin and Pozharsky’s People’s Militia rose up for the motherland, advanced to attack on the field of Borodin, fought the enemy on the outskirts of Moscow and Leningrad, Kyiv and Minsk, Stalingrad and Kursk, Sebastopol and Kharkov.

Just as in those days, today you are fighting for our people in the Donbas, for the security of our homeland: Russia. The 9 May 1945 has been immortalised in the global history books as a triumph for our united Soviet nation: its unifying and spiritual power, its unparalleled feats on the battlefront. Victory day is close and dear to each of us. There is not a single family in Russia whom the Great Patriotic War [the second world war] has not singed. The memory of the war will not fade. On this day, in the never-ending stream of the Immortal Regiment, are the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of heroes of the war. They carry photographs of their loved ones: of soldiers who were killed and remain youthful for eternity and veterans who have already passed away. We are proud of this unbroken, valiant generation of victors, that we are their heirs, and it is our duty to preserve the memory of those who destroyed Nazism, who have willed us to be vigilant, and to do everything we can to ensure that the horror of a global war is not repeated.

And therefore, regardless of any disagreements in international relations, Russia has always defended a system of equal and indivisible security.

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