{"id":52943,"date":"2025-05-09T06:40:46","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T14:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=52943"},"modified":"2025-05-09T06:42:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T14:42:48","slug":"trump-missing-his-chance-to-make-history-in-moscow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/09\/trump-missing-his-chance-to-make-history-in-moscow\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Missing His Chance To Make History in Moscow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edward Lozansky, who sent this dispatch to <\/a><\/i>Consortium News<\/strong> ahead of the 80th anniversary commemoration of the end of World War II in Moscow on Friday, unexpectedly passed away<\/a> on April 30. It is reprinted with permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

Europeans have sunk so low that the European Union leadership warned EU heads of government against participating in Moscow\u2019s May 9 celebrations this Friday of the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.<\/p>\n

Nor is the EU inviting Russia to take part in anniversary events related to the liberation of Nazi camps or to D-Day, when the U.S.S.R. played an essential role in easing the Western allies\u2019 Normandy landing by re-directing Wehrmacht divisions to the Eastern front.<\/p>\n

Kaja Kallas, the EU\u2019s top diplomat, on April 15 warned EU leaders to stay away from Moscow. \u201cAny participation in the 9th May parades or celebrations in Moscow will not be taken lightly on the European side, considering that Russia is really waging a full-scale war in Europe,\u201d\u00a0Kallas told reporters<\/a>. Kiev instead invited leaders of EU countries to come to the Ukrainian capital on Friday.<\/p>\n

The Soviet Union destroyed 70 percent<\/a> of the Wehrmacht and suffered by far the greatest number of casualties in the anti-Nazi front, the deaths of some 25 million people. Yet the EU is shunning the chance to recall this historic alliance and ease tensions with Russia, which could be an attempt at setting the groundwork to end the still raging war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

While it appeared at first that several EU leaders would ignore Kallas\u2019 warning, only one is attending: Slovakia\u2019s Prime Minister Robert Fico.<\/p>\n

Fico reacted angrily\u00a0to the \u201cdisrespectful\u201d remarks from Brussels.\u00a0\u201cI would like to inform you that I am a legitimate premier of Slovakia, a sovereign country,\u201c he told reporters. \u201cNobody can order me where to go or not to go.\u201c Fico said he will travel to Moscow to honor the Red Army soldiers who liberated his country and other victims of the Nazis.<\/p>\n

Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orban, who has been open to good relations with Moscow, said he would not attend, essentially because Hungary was with the Nazis on the losing side in the war.<\/p>\n

Gergely Gulyas, minister in charge of the Hungarian prime minister\u2019s office, said<\/a>: \u201cFor the Hungarian people, the end of World War II had a different significance than for other countries that participated in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaders from the following countries will take part in the Moscow event: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus<\/a>, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, China, Congo, Cuba, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Palestine, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n

Moscow says it\u2019s taking extensive measures to protect them on Friday against a drone attack from Ukraine, which has repeatedly struck the Russian capital with drones.\u00a0 The alarm is real after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy said he can\u2019t guarantee the safety of the 30 heads of state and government who will attend.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur position is very simple for all countries traveling to\u00a0Russia<\/a> on May 9: We cannot be held responsible for what happens on the territory of the Russian Federation,\u201d Zelensky told journalists last Saturday. \u201cThey are responsible for your safety. We will not provide any guarantees, because we do not know what Russia might do on those dates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where Is Trump?<\/b><\/p>\n

An international group that started the \u201cElbe Spirit\u201d movement publicized an appeal to President Donald Trump to go to Moscow where he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader XI Jinping, recreating an historic Yalta 2.0 summit to start drafting a new World Security Architecture.<\/p>\n

In addition to the U.S.-Russia alliance during World War II, Trump should recall the role of the Russian Empire during the American Revolutionary War. Empress Catherine the Great refused British pleas to send 20,000 Russian troops to suppress the rebellion. King George III even offered the island of Minorca as a bribe to get Russia to come to Britain\u2019s aid, but Catherine refused.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s neutrality helped the American cause by decisively hindering British efforts to defeat the rebels.<\/p>\n

Trump is calling the conflict in Ukraine \u201cBiden\u2019s War,\u201d though it was Trump who first armed Ukraine.\u00a0 He says he wants to end it.<\/p>\n

It is time to fulfill his pledge. Using the symbolic date of May 9 to\u00a0 both celebrate the end of WWII and to work towards preventing WWIII would have inscribed his name in the history books.<\/p>\n

Instead, Trump has apparently listened to his neo-con advisers and decided to skip the opportunity to break with shortsighted European leaders and, despite them, bring peace to their continent.<\/p>\n

Edward Lozansky was president and founder of the American University in Moscow and the U.S.-Russia Forum. He was also a professor at the Moscow State and National Research Nuclear Universities.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edward Lozansky, who sent this dispatch to Consortium News ahead of the 80th anniversary commemoration of the end of World War II in Moscow on Friday, unexpectedly passed away on April 30. It is reprinted with permission. Europeans have sunk so low that the European Union leadership warned EU heads of government against participating in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[817],"class_list":["post-52943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Edward Lozansky on the snubbing by European leaders, along with the U.S. president, of Moscow\u2019s May 9 celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52943"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52951,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52943\/revisions\/52951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52943"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=52943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}