An average Russian human rights activist has a very hard fate. The society does not understand him, he defends abstract rights, and he is devoid of the Western grants and is never invited to appear in TV programs. However, some of them contrive to break the information blockade. For instance, human rights activists Lev Ponomaryov and Arseny Roginsky engaged into a controversy with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Nevertheless, it did no good to them both.
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| What’s wrong with Victory Day parades in Moscow? |
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Lev Ponomaryov, the leader of the For Human Rights group, described the Victory Day military parade on May 9 as “muscle flexing.”
“I think that military vehicles at the parade are unnecessary for the country that tries to show its peaceful course of development,” he said. “Military vehicles at the parade show that we are flexing muscles and posing threat to the rest of the world. Whom do we try to show our power to? Georgia?” he added.
His attitude was shared by Arseny Roginsky, the chairman of the International Memorial Society.
“This is a symbolic act aimed to demonstrate our ‘muscles’ to the entire world and our citizens and prove that we are strong and extremely powerful. It is an artificial attempt to revive the Soviet myth that if they fear, they respect,” he said.
Also see: Tanks and rocket systems roll across Moscow's Red Square
Vladimir Putin himself gave a reply to the human rights activists. At the meeting with Russia’s government ministers Tuesday he stated that Russia does not try to threaten anybody with military parades. “Throughout many years it’s the first time when military vehicles will be involved in the parade. This is no saber-rattling. It is the demonstration of our growing defense abilities. We do not threaten anyone, and we are not going to. We do not impose anything on anybody. We possess everything in abundance. We are able to protect our people, our citizens, our state, our riches which our country abounds in,” Putin stated.
The addressee of the message is obvious. Government members are unlikely to doubt about the objectives and sense of the military parade to commemorate Victory Day. You need to have the alternative and human rights style of thinking to see the aggressiveness of the foreign policy in the military ceremony of Russia’ major holiday and at the same time not to see obvious things – thousands of Muscovites crowd along Tverskaya Street during every rehearsal of the Victory parade.
“I don’t think the demonstration of military vehicles can be meaningful either in Russia, or in any other country,” Ponomaryov said. “If it stimulated the development of our armed forces, I would support it. But these parades distract the armed forces from their normal daily work”.
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