Russia is running a vicious propaganda war to support its recent extended invasion in Ukraine. Second World War myths are repeated over and over again.
But Russian propaganda makers are remarkably poor in knowing their own history, or even recognizing what is Russian and what is not.
The samples are simply astonishing.
Here's the День Победы poster:
Soviet hero? No: a U.S. Marine fighting in Guam. You can probably figure out the Pacific location from the palm trees, and the weapon is not an SKS, it's an M2 carbine.
But this is nothing new. Previous poster innovations include this one from 2020:
This was not a Soviet soldier either - it's a Finnish official war photo from SA-Kuva, the man in picture is Klemet Halonen, photographed by Oswald Hedenström on 4.5.1944, carrying a KP/31 "Suomi" submachine gun.
The man's son was even found for an interview.
Or these brave Soviet pilots?
They are, of course, from a Heinkel He-111 crew attacking in Battle of Britain.
This pair of war veterans, used in TV broadcast on 9.5.2022, was... Bonnie and Clyde.
But perhaps the most bizarre selection was for the Tobolsk war memorial, where the engraved soldier was a picture of... Werner Goldberg, who was in 1939 described as "the ideal German soldier" by Berliner Tagesblatt.
A similar blunder was that of the fiercely antisemitic Nazis already back in 1939 - the "ideal German soldier" was Jewish.
So what can we conclude? Russia is obsessed with its past heroism, but does not know it. It is a legend that they think they are repeating, but now they are instead becoming a mirror image of the Nazis they say they are fighting. They do not know or understand the huge role of American help in their fight - T-34's were made of American steel and Russian logistics ran on American-supplied trucks and locomotives.
Russia did not face its past when USSR was dissolved in 1990's. There was no lustration. The old chekist structures picked up and continued and started to build another monster, even more mad if possible but also more corrupt.
And therefore, Russia is doomed to ridiculous failure. With nuclear weapons, it may become the failure of the whole mankind, but there is no Russian glory there. Just shame, shame, shame.
