Russian President Vladimir Putin has said it is “not a problem” that he was not invited to join other world leaders marking the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in northern France.
Mr Putin, who was invited to the 70th anniversary event in 2014, said he had “enough business” of his own in Russia.
The comments came after his government claimed D-Day was “not a game-changer”.
Russia often accuses the West of failing to properly acknowledge the Soviet Union’s role in World War Two.
World leaders, including US President Donald Trump, attended Thursday’s memorial, where they paid tribute to the Allied troops who attacked German forces on the coast of northern France on 6 June, 1944 in history’s largest sea and air invasion.
Russia’s most popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda asked: “Why does the West want everyone to think that their front wasn’t just the second front, but the main one?”. It added that millions of Soviet soldiers had been killed while the USSR was waiting for the Allies to open the second
front.
Perhaps if President Putin had been invited to join the D-Day commemorations in Normandy, Russia’s viewpoint might be more positive.
One Russian TV presenter declared: “There wouldn’t even have been a Normandy landing if it hadn’t been for the Soviet soldiers who’d died from 1941 onwards in the fight against fascism.”
