Russia not invited for 80th D-Day anniversary in France • FRANCE 24 English

Russia not invited for 80th D-Day anniversary in France • FRANCE 24 English

well I’m joined here in the studio by france4 Shirley sitbon from the news desk hi there Shirley um let’s talk about the context of these 80th anniversary of the DDA Landings commemorations um and tell us a little bit about who’s taking part and who’s not been invited well 25 heads of state are here former allies and former enemies at the time commemorating both the heroism and the atrocities of the War uh and there are those who are not here of course Vladimir Putin the Russian president he was not invited uh a few weeks ago the the French organizer said well that they will invite some representative but not the Russian president himself and then a few days ago they said there will be no representative of Russia at all former Soviet Union obviously a huge player in in the D-Day uh celebration and D-Day uh Invasion and Liberation uh of Europe uh well it’s of course because of the situation in Ukraine remember that a few years ago in 2014 after the beginning of the invasion the beginning of the war he was invited Vladimir Putin but this time the the Visions were just too strong now you talked about the context yes War uh the the Allies want to find some Unity to strengthen Ukraine which is struggling now in war with Russia very tense situation and also the Middle East the Middle East with the war there there’s division amongst the Allies about how to address this tragedy of the war there and a lot of criticism about their lack of results and lack of uh you know they didn’t have failed so far to to find a solution so this is actually omnipresent it’s all over and it will be there even though they celebrate yesterday’s Heroes they still they’re we’re in war now in the world and there are many things to resolve and they don’t all agree on how to do so okay so these are events that took place 80 years ago tomorrow and clearly for the last 79 years commemorations have been held to Mark the D-Day Landings just tell us how the nature of the commemorations has sort of evolved over the years yes they’ve been happening uh throughout the years every year and at the beginning we can see the images there’s been uh pretty low-key military uh survivors veterans uh the British Ambassador no presidents at the beginning it took several years for the presidents to arrive now uh we can see these images at the time the idea was to celebrate the heroism say how atrocious the war was this should never happen again how important Unity was and we can see D go on these images president D go late president D go he never came to Normandy never traveled to Normandy because the French did not play a key role there so we can see the beginning of the political aspect of this he went to Southern France to commemorate other events for the end of the war but not to that event 1984 world leaders arriving uh we saw Ronald Reagan uh this was uh became more politicized six presidents 1994 uh also a major change with the Bill Clinton already talking this was the end of the Soviet Union and he said so in his speech the end of an era of the Soviet Empire and basically NATO starting to expand uh so also this uh a very charged politically charged speech and this evolved because following these events where the veterans were healed and honored well there were other commemorations where the former enemies were invited uh the Germans uh the we can see ghard schroer uh which uh Jac Shirak the late president French president called his brother the brother the old enemy now well the two nations are brothers and Vladimir Putin which we just saw was also invited the first time uh a Russian president was invited and this we talked about this earlier 2014 uh Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin were both here the idea was to try and resolve the problem uh Petr poreno the former uh president of Ukraine was there and the Allies wanted to find find a solution to the war of course they uh they did not succeed okay well thank you very much indeed for that shy zon from the FR C4 news desk thank you

As nations come together this week to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Russia, the country that prides itself on playing the key role in the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany, will be absent. No Russian official representing Vladimir Putin’s government has been invited due to the war against Ukraine, now in its third year. FRANCE24’s Shirli Sitbon looks at how commemorations have evolved through the years.
#WWII #Russia #Ukraine

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