A bust of Joseph Stalin was unveiled in the Russian city of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), alongside the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad, along with two others dedicated to Marshals Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky in advance of the 80th anniversary of the victory of Russian forces at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, a 200-day battle which cost the lives of two million people and which marked the first major defeat of Nazi Germany. In view of the arrival of Vladimir Putin, the name of the entrance to the city was replaced with “Stalingrad” for the occasion.
All three statues are the work of sculptor Sergei Scherbakov. Representatives of the local government were present at the inauguration ceremony. The propaganda of In the meantime, the Kremlin has launched a campaigna, addressed to the deputies of United Russia in the Duma, to publish posts comparing the war in Ukraine to the Battle of StalingradKommersant announced in recent days.
“As in the Battle of Stalingrad, the war in Ukraine is the frontier from which we cannot retreat”, reads one of the recommendations. Stalin had ordered the soldiers engaged in Stalingrad “not to take a single step back”.
