#Battle of Kharkov

[captain-price-unofficially]

A Red Army soldier destroys a Nazi sign on Dzerzhinsky Square in liberated Kharkov. During the German occupation from 1942 it was called “German Army Square”. From the end of March to August 23, 1943, it was called “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Square” after the name of the 1st SS Panzer Division

[secondworldwarremembrancedays]

Remember the Second Battle of Kharkov: May 1942.

Stalin aimed to drive back the invading German armies with an offensive that included more than 1,000 tanks backed by 700 aircraft. But Germany blunted the attack by air power when it flew more than 900 planes into the area. The Germans then went on the attack and encircled the Russian forces with several Panzer divisions. Trapped, surrounded, and with German bombers raining explosives down on them, Russians soldiers surrendered in large numbers.

More than a quarter of a million Russian soldiers were killed, injured, or captured—ten times the number of German casualties.

[warruins]

[carbone14]

Tigre I Ausf. H de la 1ère Division SS Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler – Troisième bataille de Kharkov – Kharkov – Union soviétique – Février 1943

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"RUSS INFANTRY AMBUSH SOLID WALL OF TANKS DESTROY 71 WITH FIRE," Toronto Star. May 20, 1942. Page 1. ---- Timoshenko's Army Reports Important New Gains in Kharkov Battle - Germans Drive to South to Ease Soviet Pressure ---- SOVIET A.A. GUNNER KULIER AND 8TH VICTIM --- Moscow, May 20 - Thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of men fought in an infernal cauldron of destruction before Kharkov today. The German high command was throwing new masses of machines and men into the battle in a vain attempt to stop the Russian advance. Tank fought tank and man fought man in such a tangle that planes, engaged in a war of their own over the smoke-clouded front, could not intervene. The Moscow radio said Hitler had hurled every available tank in the battle which blazed into new fury at strategic points along the whole 1,800-mile Russian front. Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's German forces were reported "in flight" along the 100-mile front before Kharkov. In one sector German tanks attacked in a solid wall against the Russian centre and flanks, Russian infantrymen, holding their fire, took the shock of the attack and, from a thousand foxholes, leaped out with hand grenades.

[look-sharp-notes]

Наталия Фёдоровна Меклин(Кравцова). Родилась 8 сентября 1922 года в городе Лубны, ныне Полтавской области, в семье служащего. Жила в Харькове и Киеве. В 1940 году окончила среднюю школу и аэроклуб, в 1941 году - 1-й курс Московского авиационного института. С октября 1941 года в рядах Красной Армии. В 1942 году окончила Энгельсскую военную авиационную школу пилотов. С мая 1942 года в действующей армии. К декабрю 1944 года старший лётчик 46-го Гвардейского ночного бомбардировочного авиационного полка (325-я ночная бомбардировочная авиационная дивизия, 4-я Воздушная армия, 2-й Белорусский фронт) Гвардии лейтенант Н. Ф. Меклин совершила 840 боевых вылетов на бомбардировку важных объектов в тылу врага, скоплений его живой силы и боевой техники, нанеся ему значительный урон. Во время Белорусской операции 1944 года бомбила скопления войск противника на реке Проня и Днепр, в районе Могилёва, Минска, Гродно. 23 февраля 1945 года за мужество и воинскую доблесть, проявленные в боях с врагами, удостоена звания Героя Советского Союза. Всего выполнила 982 успешных боевых вылета.

She was born on September 8, 1922 in the city of Lubny, now Poltava region, in the family of an employee. Lived in Kharkov and Kyiv. In 1940 she graduated from high school and the flying club, in 1941 she graduated from the 1st year of the Moscow Aviation Institute. Since October 1941 in the ranks of the Red Army. In 1942 she graduated from the Engels Military Aviation Pilot School. Since May 1942 in the active army. By December 1944, the senior pilot of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment (325th Night Bomber Aviation Division, 4th Air Army, 2nd Belorussian Front) of the Guard, Lieutenant N. F. Meklin, made 840 sorties to bomb important targets behind enemy lines, concentrations of his manpower and military equipment, causing him significant damage. During the Belarusian operation of 1944, it bombed enemy troop concentrations on the Pronya and Dnieper rivers, in the area of ​​Mogilev, Minsk, and Grodno. On February 23, 1945, for courage and military valor shown in battles with enemies, she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In total, she completed 982 successful combat missions.

[deutschland-im-krieg]

Heer (German army) soldiers change their firing position during a street battle in the Battle for Kharkov, under cover of armoured vehicles. An Sd.Kfz.250/1 armoured personnel carrier from the 57. Infanterie-Division and a StuG III from the Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197, 23.10.1941

[unofficial-com1]

The massive military clanger of 1942 (and '43.)

THIS is the motherfucking CAUCASUS BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

The Caucasus! Home to many things! A plurality of beautiful cultures, languages AND a massive source of resources. From the 1920s until the '90s, the Caucasus was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the region's usefulness was not lost on Moscow. Huge oil reserves and metal reserves exist in the Caucasus to this day AND the mountains provide a natural barrier to invasion.

Enter the Nazis.

In 1942, the Nazis had fallen on hard times in the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa had failed to meet it's primary goal of destroying the Red Army and causing the collapse of the USSR. What's more, they had just gotten their asses kicked in the Winter Offensive of 1941-42 by Zhukov. Below is the aftermath of the Winter Offensive:

So, Hans was having a hard time. Germany was having a shortage of many things. Germany was having a shortage of manpower, equipment, food, coats, horses, general logistics and, biggest of all, oil. Germany had expected the USSR to collapse by now which would have given Germany all the resources of the European USSR. The Nazis were arrogant bastards, however, and did not have a contingency plan for when this obviously did not happen. So, Hitler, Halder, Jodl and the rest all had to come up with a plan and very ruddy quickly. Some of the generals wanted to try again at Moscow but this was obviously a terrible idea. Instead, Hitler and his generals agreed to go into the Caucasus to steal all the oil and cut of the Soviets from it.

But there was a problem. Railways.

From this^ map, we can deduce that there are really only two major lines going into the Caucasus, the one from the Kuban and the one from Stalingrad. This meant that the capture of Stalingrad was essential to the Caucasus campaign for the Nazis, contrary to what Wehraboos will tell you; sending hundreds of thousands of Nazis on one (1) major railway line in the USSR is a recipe for disaster when a 5'6'' man from Perm with a stick of dynamite catches wind of this. So, Nazi Germany's plan was this: Take Stalingrad to secure the railways. Secure the Caucasus. Steal all the resources. Try again at Moscow at a later date.

Spoiler alert: this did not happen.

The Nazis got this^ far before shit really hit the fan. The first problem was that Stalingrad was a touch nut to crack. The Nazis attacked Stalingrad for months on end and the city's defenders just refused to give up every inch without a fight. What's more is that the Nazis couldn't make it past the Caucasus mountains which meant that they were unable to cut off the Caucasus like they had hoped. Things then got worse for the Nazis.

Remember this guy? Say hi to Zhukov again. Zhukov had an idea.

That's right. In 11 days, Zhukov broke the back of the German Sixth Army and 4th Panzer Army. The Battle of Stalingrad lasted from the 17th of July, 1942, to the 2nd of February, 1943. In 11 days in November, 1942, the tide of the battle was turned completely. I mean, I say that, the Nazis never really had a hope to begin with. The next few months would entail actually scrubbing the Nazis out of the Caucasus and out of Stalingrad. Operation Uranus was only a smaller part of the much wider Voronezh-Kharkov offensive:

The aftermath of the Battle of Stalingrad saw Von Manstein's new Don Front get completely demolished. It would signal the end of any Nazi offensives in the region until the Battle of Kharkov. All that the Nazis' gamble in the Caucasus achieved was 746,000 soldiers dead, millions more injured, thousands of tanks, planes and other vehicles lost, billions of marks worth in equipment lost and their foothold in the Caucasus lost forever. It permanently dashed any dreams of the fall of the USSR, for the Nazis and, from here on out, it would just be a long retreat back to Berlin.

Moral of the story? Not much fun in Stalingrad.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Destroyed Panzer III Ausf L in the Kharkiv sector 1943

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.12 (after 1900)

1926 – The Italian-built airship Norge becomes the first vessel to fly over the North Pole. 1926 – The 1926 United Kingdom general strike ends. 1932 – Ten weeks after his abduction, Charles Jr., the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, is found dead near Hopewell, New Jersey, just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home. 1933 – The Agricultural Adjustment Act, which restricts agricultural production through government purchase of livestock for slaughter and paying subsidies to farmers when they remove land from planting, is signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1933 – President Roosevelt signs legislation creating the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the predecessor of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 1937 – The Duke and Duchess of York are crowned as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom in Westminster Abbey. 1941 – Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin. 1942 – World War II: Second Battle of Kharkov: In eastern Ukraine, Red Army forces under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko launch a major offensive from the Izium bridgehead, only to be encircled and destroyed by the troops of Army Group South two weeks later. 1942 – World War II: The U.S. tanker SS Virginia is torpedoed in the mouth of the Mississippi River by the German submarine U-507. 1948 – Wilhelmina, Queen regnant of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, cedes the throne to her daughter Juliana. 1949 – Cold War: The Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin. 1965 – The Soviet spacecraft Luna 5 crashes on the Moon. 1968 – Vietnam War: North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces attack Australian troops defending Fire Support Base Coral. 1975 – Indochina Wars: Democratic Kampuchea naval forces capture the SS Mayaguez. 1978 – In Zaire, rebels occupy the city of Kolwezi, the mining center of the province of Shaba (now known as Katanga); the local government asks the US, France and Belgium to restore order. 1982 – During a procession outside the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal, security guards overpower Juan María Fernández y Krohn before he can attack Pope John Paul II with a bayonet. 1989 – The San Bernardino train disaster kills four people, only to be followed a week later by an underground gasoline pipeline explosion, which kills two more people. 1998 – Four students are shot at Trisakti University, leading to widespread riots and the fall of Suharto. 2002 – Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro, becoming the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since the Cuban Revolution. 2003 – The Riyadh compound bombings in Saudi Arabia, carried out by al-Qaeda, kill 39 people. 2006 – Mass unrest by the Primeiro Comando da Capital begins in São Paulo (Brazil), leaving at least 150 dead. 2006 – Iranian Azeris interpret a cartoon published in an Iranian magazine as insulting, resulting in massive riots throughout the country. 2008 – An earthquake (measuring around 8.0 magnitude) occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 69,000 people. 2008 – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts the largest-ever raid of a workplace in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud. 2010 – Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashes on final approach to Tripoli International Airport in Tripoli, Libya, killing 103 out of the 104 people on board. 2015 – A train derailment in Philadelphia kills eight people and injures more than 200. 2015 – Massive Nepal earthquake kills 218 people and injures more than 3,500. 2017 – The WannaCry ransomware attack impacts over 400,000 computers worldwide, targeting computers of the United Kingdom's National Health Services and Telefónica computers. 2018 – Paris knife attack: A man is fatally shot by police in Paris after killing one and injuring several others.

[nordic-noire]

On Ukraine, two years in...

The word 'strategic defeat' is often used to describe Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and not without good reason. All of Russia's initial goals failed within the first month, and Russia has been humiliated over and over again. However, a Russian strategic defeat and a Ukrainian victory are unfortunately not synonymous.

After the Kremlin was alarmed by the rout of its forces in Kharkov, it has dug in and mobilized, effectively freezing the front lines. While Russia may be seemingly hopeless in combined arms advances, it can fight a long-term, well prepared defense just fine.

Ukraine hoped to cause a shock-and-awe rout on the left bank of the Dnipr, but both due to Russian preparation and Ukrainian mistakes the offensive failed.

Ukraine continued the failed offensive for months, burning through manpower and ammunition in return for no strategic advantages.

Russia is able to maintain its losses with extensive conscription and brutal disciplinary measures on its front line troops.

Holding the annexed territories is the only way Putin can justify the war anymore, and Ukraine was not able to breach the Russian defenses. Currently only a black swan event that collapses the Russian army will enable Ukraine to liberate its occupied territories. In the medium term, it's unlikely anything will cause such a collapse.

Both Ukraine and the West should consider the war a long-term attritional conflict, where Ukraine's main objective should be to cause maximum casualties. With the US position being increasingly unreliable and dangerous, Europe is finally ramping up ammunition production, but the policy must actually be followed through and the ammunition delivered.

The West must equip Ukraine with the ammunition to enable Ukraine to fight a long-term defense.

Ukraine must cause maximum casualties while avoiding battles where own casualties are high eg. Avdiivka, Bahkmut.

F-16 fighters will not change the situation, but will provide welcome air cover for the army. Air power cannot occupy or hold territory.

Indifferent to casualties, Putin will never back down. While the Russian soldiers deservedly suffer horribly on the front, unfortunately so do the Ukrainians. Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price, and for the time being, the Kremlin is willing to sacrifice much more than the West.

'Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.'

[ultrajaphunter]

4/5 Rybar's Team Presents a Detailed Analysis of the Battle for Avdeevka and Records the Results Achieved by the End of October 21: https://rybar.ru/chto-proizoshlo-v-avdeevke-razbor-rybarya/

Stage three: October 16-19, 2023

An Additional Reinforcement Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, apparently, is being Formed in Novokalinovo : Reserves are apparently being Transferred there for an Attack towards Krasnogorovka and the Surrounding area. 

Fighting around the Ash Dump Continues. 

The height itself Remains a Draw: neither side can Gain a Foothold on the Waste Heap.

At the same time, to the West of Avdeevka there are Fierce Battles on the Vodyanoye - Severnoye - Tonenkoye line . 

Due to the Dense Mining of the Area, Neither RuZZian Troops can approach Ukrainian Positions, Nor the Ukrainian Armed Forces are able to Launch a Successful Counterattack.

The Advance from Spartak is relatively Successful: the Front Line along the Railway is Leveled, the Assault Groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Deployed through the “Tsar’s Hunt” are Scattered.

Enemy movements were noticed in Pervomaisky and Netailovo : apparently, the Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Attempted to Seize the initiative by striking the flank of the now southern advancing group of the RuZZian Armed Forces.

But the RF Armed Forces are Solving the Main task of this Stage: the Destruction of the Transferred Reserves - Including Those that were Hastily Withdrawn from the Kharkov Region and the Zaporozhye Direction .

[wwiigermany]

Hermann Dahlke

He was born on 11 February 1917 in Greifswald. In 1933 he joined the Hitler Youth, then later joined the volunteer labour service and then applied to join the SS and was posted to the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. World War II Dahlke was awarded the Knight's Cross on 3 March 1943 as an SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant), when in a well executed attack, his unit broke into the enemy's southern positions during the Third Battle of Kharkov. His platoon threw back the numerically superior enemy in hand-to-hand fighting and thus made a decisive contribution to the successful advance of the battalion and the whole battle group. Promoted to SS-Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant), he was given command of the 3rd Company, 1st SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment LSSAH and was killed in action on 5 July 1943 on the Russian Front near Belgorod.

[redeyedroid]

I often think that the creation myth of modern Britain is the summer of 1940. France has fallen. We stand alone against Nazi Germany. Invasion is imminent. Only the RAF stands between the free world and darkness. Back to the wall, massively outnumbered, with luck and fortitude Fighter Command fights off the overwhelming might of the Luftwaffe.

Their finest hour.

It is, of course, nonsense.

Britain had the world’s largest empire to call on. It’s war effort was supported by it’s status as the greatest maritime power in history. It had access to the world’s trade. It was never alone.

The RAF, locally outnumbered in the way all defending forces might be, given that the Luftwaffe could pick and choose their points of attack, overall had rough parity with the Germans (especially in the most important category: single-engined fighters. The Spitfires, Hurricanes and Messerschmitts). The British bomber force, normally left off the order of battle for the Battle of Britain, was active all summer long in 1940, attacking airfields and ports in Northern France. The Germans had poor intelligence, no clear strategy and an air force designed to support an army’s operations, not subjugate a country on it’s own. The RAF had the only specialised air defence system in the world and fought a battle for which it had trained and practiced for years.

In the end, the Battle of Britain was over quickly and decisively. It was not the close run thing of popular imagination, and even if it had been, invasion was a near impossibility. The Germans had precisely none of the specialised equipment or logistics the Allies would haul across the Channel 4 years later and they had no way of protecting a naval invasion force from the wrath of what would have been a seriously upset Royal Navy.

It should not be particularly controversial to say this – a German invasion was wargamed in the 70s and, even though conditions were weighted towards them, the German side was comprehensively defeated – and no serious writing in the past 20 years suggests otherwise.

The myths persist and it’s understandable why. Everyone loves an underdog triumphing against all odds. No one wants the story where the RAF are never seriously threatened while they give the Germans a kicking.

More than that the myths simplify some of the most complicated set of events in human history and make them comprehendible; they set Winston Churchill up as the indefatigable wartime leader, the Greatest Briton, while ignoring the darker and less competent parts of his career and personality; and they let us view ourselves in ways where we don’t have to engage with parts of our history that might make us uncomfortable. We were the only ones fighting Nazi tyranny. We stood alone. We were unquestionably the good guys then, so we must always be the good guys. We must always have been the good guys.

Mix this with the overriding opinion that the empire was mostly a force for good (the white man’s burden is an idea that has never fully died) and that it was the British that ended the Transatlantic Slave Trade (while omitting that we profited from it for centuries) and you get a decent idea of the populist portrayal of Britain today. Nigel Farage holding a pint while he pays tribute to The Few, when in reality, he’d’ve been making friends with the Nazis pre-war and talking about how he stood ready to work with Mr Hitler in forging a new Europe should the SS have somehow found itself marching down Whitehall.

Today’s the anniversary of one of Russia’s myths.

The last great German offensive on the Eastern Front began in early July 1943. After the disaster of Stalingrad the southern front had destabilised and this led to months of fluid fighting as the Red Army pushed forward, overextended and was then mauled by a German counterstroke. Kharkov changed hands twice and at the end, when the spring came and the roads turned to mud, there was a large salient nearly twice the size of Wales around the city of Kursk.

The salient was an obvious vulnerability, an attack so predictable it hardly needed the confirmation provided by intelligence. Hitler delayed the attack repeatedly. Often this is credited to his desire to see more and more of Germany’s new tanks, the Panther and Tiger, reach service, their capabilities predicted to be decisive. But there are other, more prosaic reasons that contributed to the delays. Ones of weather and logistics. Either way, the Soviets were given more than enough time to prepare defences or the battle became something unusual in Europe, bearing more resemblance to the Western Front of the First World War than the Eastern Front of the Second. Massed attacks trying to hammer through a defensive system of trenches and strongpoints 20 miles deep.

The photos of the battle and the accounts describe Operation Citadel, the battle of Kursk, as the great tank battle of the war, but it isn’t. The Germans used mass firepower and tanks to break into the complex defensive systems the Soviets had used hundreds of thousands of civilians to build. The Soviets employed mass firepower to resist the attack. Artillery, the God of War, dominated.

The Germans made slow progress, the lightning advances of previous years absent. Their ability to break into Soviet defences was undimmed, but their ability to break out was blunted. The Soviets took horrendous casualties in slowing the advance. Hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded in the fortnight the offensive lasted.

The culmination came on the 12th, near the small town of Prokhorovka where the myth tells us that the greatest tank battle in history was fought, where thousands of vehicles were engaged in a maelstrom of violence where tanks rammed each other amidst explosions, fire and death. The Soviets lost hundreds of tanks, but so did the Germans, their losses so grievous that the offensive was stopped and the Germans never recovered.

The research does not back this up.

The Germans engaged round Prokhorovka were the most powerful units they had available, II SS Panzer Corps, comprising the 1st, 2nd and 3rd SS Panzer Divisions, some of the most notorious and infamous units of the war. Completely reliable politically, the Waffen SS were favoured in equipment and manpower and these divisions were formidable and experienced formations, made up of the fanatical true believers of the Nazi regime, many of whom were responsible for numerous war crimes . What appears to have happened is that many tanks of the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army that confronted them drove into a Soviet ditch, dug to limit the movement of armour. When they realised what was happening and moved to cross the ditch by way of a bridge, they bottlenecked and made easy targets. The latest German AFVs outranged the T-34/43s of the 5GTA and the Germans were able to pick off the Russians at range. Prokhorovka was a one-sided tactical victory for the Germans.

Establishing tank losses after an engagement is difficult. Tanks that are abandoned can be recovered, damage repaired and the vehicle returned to combat. But it seems likely that the Soviets lost upwards of 240 tanks on the 12th July 1943. The Germans, a handful, maybe as few as four.

Two days earlier, on the 10th, the British and Americans had launched Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. This led to landings on the Italian mainland at the beginning of September.

With progress stalling and alarmed at developments in the Mediterranean, Hitler cancelled Citadel shortly after Prokhorovka so he could transfer forces to Italy. By early August, the 1st SS Panzer Division was in Italy, ready to seize control when the Italians made peace on the 8th of September.

That doesn’t make the myth. Nor does the huge role lend lease played in Soviet victory. By 1943, the Red Army was clothed, fed and transported by American and British industry. Entire oil refineries were transported across the world. Millions of tons of raw materials were exported. Spam was hugely popular. There were butter shortages in the USA because so much was given to the USSR. Soviet delegations were allowed to commit industrial espionage on an epic scale, all done openly as they took blueprints, plans and photos of whatever marvel of manufacturing they liked. American ships sailed across the Pacific under Soviet flags and were studiously ignored by the Japanese.

The Russian myth today, which you can find on most social media sites, is that Russian blood and only Russian blood won the war. When the latest research on Prokhorovka was published in a German magazine, the Russian Ambassador was quoted as saying, "Attempts to rewrite immutable historical facts, falsify the events of those years, play down the decisive role of the Soviet people in defeating Nazism and freeing Europe from the 'brown plague', look unworthy and insulting."

A Russian MP said the article, "obliterated the German nation's penance for what was done by Nazi Germany."

Putin has visited the site many times. In 2000 he was there with the Presidents of Belarus and Ukraine and quoted as saying “the greatest contribution to the victory over Nazism belonged to the nations of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and ever closer friendship of those fraternal countries would be the best monument to the dead.”

"The outcome of World War II is sacred." is another thing Putin has said and so what happened must be warped and falsified to protect the purity of the Russian war. The subjugation of Eastern Europe under Stalinist tyranny is replaced by tales of liberation by the Red Army. The cynicism of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact where the Nazis and Soviets split between them the lands of Central and Eastern Europe is now a necessity, the Soviets protecting themselves from the Nazis after being sold out by the western powers.

Putin is the heir, the descendant of the men who liberated Europe from the Nazis. They were liberators then, they are liberators now. The myth offers justification and legitimacy. That the Liberator is emulating Stalin in making millions of people unwilling subjects of a Russian empire and shooting those who resist is not something that fits the image. But themes of national unity, the defence of the Motherland from the fascist hordes, and ones of heroism and sacrifice do, and they feed a narrative, one that a Russia in decline needed in the 2000s for it’s own self-worth, and one the regime fighting a war of aggression needs today to manufacture consent among it's citizens.

People talk about history being rewritten, but they don’t mean that. History was already written to exclude the things that challenge our view of ourselves. We’ve been given edited and abridged versions of our histories for all our lives. What people mean is that they don’t want challenged. They want the myths. The comfort. They like when history is their own monologue of what’s good and just. They don’t want a dialogue with the people ethnically cleansed as part of empire’s civilising mission, or the truth about the slavery and theft that built our cities, or to think that the Germans cut a Soviet tank force to pieces one summer’s day in 1943.

Russia’s myths are not so different from our own. Ours are as vulnerable to manipulation, to being twisted and used to justify appalling acts. This is why it’s important for us to interrogate them and try to find the truth of them instead of continuing to take them at face value.