France emphasizes that it has invited Russia. This is denied by the Russian side. President Putin is officially expelled because of the war in Ukraine.
Paris - From June 1st to 16th this year, France will hold a large-scale commemoration event to mark the 80th anniversary of the so-called D-Day. The day of remembrance refers to the landing of around 150,000 Allied soldiers who reached the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944 to fight in France against the soldiers of the German Reich.
Putin not wanted – Macron celebrates commemoration in France without the Russian ruler
Every year around June 6, numerous events commemorating D-Day take place in Normandy, northwestern France, including fireworks, concerts and historical dances. Every five years, the anniversaries are celebrated with international ceremonies, commemorations and celebrations.
This year, the international commemoration event with heads of state from all over the world will take place on Thursday, June 6, 2024, in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer. France is also inviting Russia to take part - but according to the organizers, Russian President Vladimir Putin remains excluded from the invitation, the British
Guardian
now reports . According to the organizers, the reason is the war against Ukraine.
Organizers with a message to Putin: France does not follow historical revisionism
“Given the circumstances, President Putin will not be invited to take part in the commemorations of the Normandy landings,” the organizing committee of the liberation mission was quoted as saying by the
Guardian
. However, we still welcome Russia's participation in the ceremonies commemorating the Allied soldiers in Normandy. Ultimately, so that “the importance of the commitment and sacrifices of the Soviet people as well as their contribution to the victory of 1945 can be honored,” the organizers emphasized.
“Unlike the Kremlin regime, France does not pursue a policy of historical revisionism,” added the organizers of the 80th D-Day commemoration.
Russia emphasizes that it has not yet received an invitation to the 80th D-Day commemoration
Russia has now also commented on the matter and emphasized that it has not yet been invited by France to the commemorations.
“
So far we have not received any confirmation through diplomatic channels,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Russian state news agency
Tass
on Wednesday morning.
The Russian embassy in Paris says it has not received any official invitations to take part in the celebrations for the 80th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, as Tass
reported
. “So far we have not received any official invitations from the French side,” said an embassy spokesman.
Radio station
Europe 1
had previously reported, citing its sources, that France planned to invite Russia to take part in the commemorations in Normandy on June 6. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said the Kremlin had not received such an invitation.
Putin took part in the commemoration ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day
Russian President Putin was invited to and took part in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the landing of Allied soldiers in Normandy in 2014. A few months earlier, Russia annexed the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
At the time, then-French President Francois Hollande said: “You can have disagreements with Vladimir Putin, but I have never forgotten and will never forget that the Russian people gave millions of lives.”
According to historians, around 27 million people from the Soviet Union died during the Second World War, including around 8.7 million soldiers and 19 million civilians. After commemorations in June 2014, Putin and then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met at the Elysée Palace for talks after Moscow supported a pro-Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine.
Macron recently called for a tougher course in dealing with Putin's Russia
Putin was not invited to the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of D-Day in 2019, which Donald Trump also took part in. According to the Élysée Palace, this was not unusual, as Russia had already taken part in the most important commemorations of the decade.
Regarding support for Ukrainian soldiers in the fight against Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron has increasingly advocated a more offensive course in the defense of Ukraine in recent weeks. It recently became known, among other things, that France is considering sending NATO soldiers to Ukraine. Among other things, it is probably due to concerns that Russia could plan a major offensive on the Ukrainian city of Odessa on the Black Sea in order to secure Crimea from here.
At the beginning of April it also became public that Macron wanted to push Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) to take a tougher course on Ukraine. As the
Wall Street Journal
reported on Wednesday, the French President wanted to keep Putin's Kremlin regime in the dark about the West's "red lines" in the future and therefore suggested a corresponding change in strategy to US President Joe Biden and German Prime Minister Scholz. The aim was a position of ambiguity towards Russia, wrote the US magazine.
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