Facts about the Red Army’s Polish Campaign on September 17, 1939

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On September 17, 1939, the Red Army launched a military operation in Poland’s eastern regions, also known as the Red Army’s Polish Campaign. The material is from Russian MFA Telegram channel, where one can also watch a short facta newsreel.

Certain (pseudo)academic circles and mainstream media in the West intentionally promote an excessively biased interpretation of these events seeking to equate the Third Reich and the USSR and cast our country as an aggressor.

❗️ Such approach is completely at odds with the historical truth.

Britain and France, which had played their role in fostering Hitler’s aggression in Europe and redirecting it eastward, were not willing to fulfill their alliance commitments to Poland, having just formally declared a war against the Third Reich, and refrained from direct military confrontation.

Traffic directors
A caricature by Boris Yefimov showing Britain and France as traffic directors, leading Hitler’s war gang along the way to the USSR, while stopping his progress to Western Europe. The caricature is not marked with year, but presumably depicts the effects of the Munich Conspiracy.

The French army did not even attempt to prevent the redeployment of the Wehrmacht units to the East. As Nazi general Alfred Jodl later testified at the Nuremberg trials, “if the Reich did not fail in 1939, it was only because during the Polish campaign, approximately 110 French and British divisions, stationed in the West, took no action against Germany’s 23 divisions”.

Thus, Warsaw, which completely relied on support of Britain and France, was, in fact, abandoned by the allies and had to face Hitler’s aggression. Poland was doomed to meet the same fate that had Czechoslovakia a year earlier. Betrayed by its allies and falling victim to its own political miscalculation, the Polish leadership — which for years had prioritized collaboration with Nazi Germany — ultimately led its nation to catastrophe.
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Facts about the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Treaty of August 23, 1939

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The material is from Russian MFA Telegram channel, where one can also watch a short facta newsreel.

Here we re-blog the in-depth version from the MFA’s Telegraph blog.

Read also our article The complete list of pacts concluded between Germany and other European countries before and during World War II.

On August 23, 1939 — the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Treaty of Non-Aggression, a document that obligated the two Parties “to refrain from any act of violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, either individually or jointly with other Powers.”

This Document was a key achievement of the Soviet diplomacy ahead of WWII: the USSR was able to buy time to better prepare to repel Hitler’s impending attack, which had been seen as inevitable due to the failed policy of “appeasement” by Western European states and their refusal to forge a collective security agreement with our nation against Nazism.

Signing the non-aggression treaty with Germany was a difficult but necessary decision by the Soviet leadership, dictated by national security considerations and the urgent need to deter Nazi aggression in the east.

In the 1930s, twenty years after the end of World War I, the threat of a new large-scale armed conflict in Europe started to grow. A key factor for this was the crisis of the Versailles system of international relations, designed by Britain and France, which paved the way for rising revanchist sentiments in the states it had humiliated — Germany and Italy.

The League of Nations, established as a universal organisation for settling international disputes by diplomatic and political legal means, proved unable to fulfill its mandate, mired in the controversy and intrigues of European states that tried to use the body for their own selfish and opportunistic purposes.

Against this backdrop, the hydra of fascism began spreading rapidly across Europe. Political leaders confident of their own nations’ superiority came to power first in Italy (1922) and then in Germany (1933), where a Nazi dictatorship led by Hitler was established.

With the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, the threat of a new war in Europe became real. Hitler’s misanthropic ideology was rooted in the notorious doctrine of “racial superiority.” The Nazis used this doctrine to justify Germany’s pursuit of world domination. In this way, an absolute evil emerged in the centre of Europe, endangering the peace and freedom of entire nations.

By the mid-1930s, Germany’s military preparations were becoming increasingly obvious and intense. The strength of the German armed forces reached almost half a million personnel. In 1935, the Nazi regime officially announced the creation of a German military air force (whose existence had been prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles). Hitler signed a decree reintroducing universal conscription and expanding the military, the so-called new peacetime Wehrmacht consisted of 36 divisions totalling 550’000 soldiers and officers. For the first time since its defeat in World War I, Germany again possessed a significant military power capable of launching full-scale offensive operations. Furthermore, the Reich initiated the construction of the Navy, a move that was, in effect, sanctioned by a bilateral agreement between Germany and Britain (signed in London in 1935) in direct contravention of the Versailles prohibitions.
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Finland’s Dirty Secret: From “Neutral” Ally to Hitler’s Partner – Dispelling the Finnish Myths

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We translated this very informative series of posts from a German Telegram channel FKT – Geschichte der Sowjetunion (History of the Soviet Union) and published it on our Telegram channel Beorn And The Shieldmaiden. Here we present the series in the form of one consecutive article.

👉 Read also: The new Finnish doctrine: Ignorance, deception, and ingratitude. An Article by Dmitry Medvedev, “Kill the Russians.” 105 years ago, the Finnish army staged the massacre in Vyborg. The truth must come out!, and many other materials at the blog, bearing the Finland tag.

Finland’s Dirty Secret: From “Neutral” Ally to Hitler’s Partner

Today, Finland likes to play the victim card and acts as if it had nothing to do with the siege of Leningrad. The argument goes:

“We did not attack the city, Mannerheim refused to bomb it, we just stood by and took care of our own affairs.”

A nice story. Too bad it’s pure fiction.

The reality is different: Finnish troops sat for three years at the gates of Leningrad. They did not drink coffee and were not “neutral.” They held a third of the blockade line. Without Finland’s involvement, the Germans would not have been able to completely seal off the city. Together they closed the ring that starved one million people, including 400,000 children.

And Mannerheim, the “savior”?

His order was to bomb the Road of Life (which was actually not a road but a frozen lake), the only route over which food was transported across Lake Ladoga.

On June 25, 1941, Mannerheim ordered the Finnish army to commence hostilities against the USSR:

“I call you to a holy war against the enemy of our nation. Together with the mighty forces of Germany, as brothers in arms, we resolutely embark on a crusade against the enemy to secure a safe future for Finland.”

Finland dreamed of expansion and had concrete plans. On the dream map of “Greater Finland,” Russian cities like Murmansk, Leningrad, and Kandalaksha are marked as Finnish.

Let’s Get to Know Mannerheim

Before we come to Finland’s well-known war against the USSR on Hitler’s side, we need to turn back the clock a bit and look at the context. Finland as a state emerged within Russia. Before the Russo-Swedish War, these territories were simply the eastern part of Sweden. After the war, Russia took them over and established the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. It remained part of the Russian Empire until the 1917 revolution.

Now let’s get to know Mannerheim – a military and political figure who came from poor Swedish-Finnish noble backgrounds but rose to become a general in the Russian army and an officer of the Imperial Guard, close to Nicholas II himself and part of the empire’s military elite. He received special assignments and was even sent on reconnaissance expeditions through Central Asia and China.

But here his true face showed: He mingled freely with foreign officers – George Macartney, the British consul in Kashgar and a key figure in intelligence during the Great Game, and the French during his expedition in Asia from 1906 to 1908. Later, he was even suspected of having connections to Masonic circles. All this suggests that his loyalty was never fully aligned with Russia.

After the empire’s collapse, he wasted no time. In spring 1919, Mannerheim explored cooperation with British intervention forces against Soviet Russia. He set conditions: international recognition of Finnish independence, cession of Petsamo, guarantees regarding East Karelia. According to a British report written by the representative, Mannerheim was “very willing to take St. Petersburg and destroy the Bolsheviks there” in February 1919.

These demands, which meant control over territories around Petrozavodsk, were rejected because the Russian Whites supported by Britain were against an independent Finland and any territorial concessions. Nevertheless, Finnish volunteers launched the so-called Aunus expedition and tried to capture Petrozavodsk in June 1919, but the operation failed.

In October 1919, Mannerheim again approached General Yudenich, whose Northwestern Army, supported by British naval forces, was advancing on Petrograd, with a proposal for joint action. His terms were rejected again. Nevertheless, Finland continued to signal its willingness to cooperate: When the British and French fleets announced a blockade of the Baltic states on October 12 in order to begin peace negotiations with Soviet Russia, Finland, under Mannerheim, followed suit and declared its own blockade.

Finland’s Relations with Hitler in the 1930s

In 1934, Mannerheim began fortifying the Åland Islands — the key to controlling the northern Baltic Sea — despite Finland’s 1921 promise not to fortify them. In 1935, he approached Germany and participated in a secret conference with Hermann Göring, Hungarian Prime Minister Gömbös, and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Polish Parliament to discuss joint measures against the USSR. Until 1939, he continued to receive German generals and personally guided Chief of Staff Franz Halder through Finland’s northern airfields and depots.
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The new Finnish doctrine: Ignorance, deception, and ingratitude. An Article by Dmitry Medvedev

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The following article war written by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, and published by TASS.

UPDATE 15.09.2025: Russian MFA issued an official translation of the article on their Telegraph blog on September 13. We are updating this blog with the official text, making it a re-blog. All illustrations are ours.

👉 We are covering the “Finnish Question” in a series of posts at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”. The series “Finland’s Dirty Secret: From “Neutral” Ally to Hitler’s Partner” will be published at the Beehive later, upon its conclusion. Read the two publications by Maria Zaharova, in response to the Finnish PM Stubb’s ignoramous statements: part 1 and part 2.

👉 See also The Art of Timely Betrayal. Why the Finnish SS avoided punishment? and The European Genocide of the Russian People.

The new Finnish doctrine: Ignorance, deception, and ingratitude

Deputy Chairman of Security Council Dmitry Medvedev draws historical parallels between today’s Finnish leaders and their predecessors of nearly a century ago, and brings up the consequences of their past aggression against Russia.

Last week, I visited the Russian-Finnish border in the Leningrad Region and spoke with local authorities and our border guards. The border, once bustling, is now deserted. By Helsinki’s decision, decades of constructive and mutually beneficial relations have been ruined. Ordinary Finns are the first to feel the consequences. They had gained much from thriving trade and economic cooperation, and now they openly voice frustration with the misguided policies of their own government, which clearly go against their interests.

I would like to say a few words about the underlying causes of this situation. It is by no means accidental. Today’s turbulent geopolitics has brought to light the long-standing issues and revealed their true nature. This is what happened to Finland.

A visit to our northwestern regions in early autumn inevitably brings to mind one of the most tragic dates in the history of St Petersburg, which is the onset of the siege on September 8, 1941. Yet, it seems that we are the only ones to remember those dark days. The direct perpetrators of those events are making every effort to erase the traces of their crimes from historical memory, or at least to avoid “inconvenient” parallels with their current policies. And this concerns not only Germany, which at the official level refuses to recognise the siege of Leningrad as a crime against humanity.

Death to the German-Finnish Occupiers!
This is TASS Window #11 from Leningrad, created in July of 1944 by Vasily Selivanov.
The poster shows the Finns taking Hitler’s baits of the “Greater Finland to Urals and Leningrad”. It is accompanied by a verse by K. Vysokovsky.
— I’ll take the Urals! – the bandit cried,
Accepting Hitler’s bait at face value,
The Russian “Hurra!” was then heard,
Turning the bandits into dust and feathers!
Source: Beorn And The Shieldmaiden

We should not forget that it would have been impossible to impose the siege of Leningrad, a siege that took hundreds of thousands of civilian lives, without the involvement of the Finnish armed forces. Succumbing to revenge-seeking moods and striving to revise the outcomes of the 1939-1940 Soviet-Finnish standoff, the Finnish leadership recklessly plunged into the furnace of war alongside Nazi Germany. At that time, ultra-nationalist propaganda narratives prevailed in Finnish society. With the approval of their Nazi brethren, Helsinki seriously discussed the idea of Finnlands Lebensraum (Finland’s Living Space). The country’s military-political authorities intended to reclaim territories ceded to the Soviet Union under the Moscow Peace Treaty of March 12, 1940 and to reach “natural borders of Greater Finland” from the Gulf of Finland to the Barents Sea, including East Karelia, Leningrad and its environs, and the Kola Peninsula freeing these lands from the hated Russians. In their wildest fantasies, the Finns wanted to advance beyond the Ural Mountains all the way to the Ob River. Back in the day, these territorial claims (in proportion to the country’s actual size) were among the greediest in Europe. They even surpassed territorial claims to neighbouring states voiced by other Axis countries, including Italy, Romania, and Hungary.
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USSR and China: United in Victory | RT Documentary

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Victory in the Second World War was won through the efforts of millions of people from different nations – both on the front line and behind it. In 2025, Russia and China mark the 80th anniversary of the war’s end.


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In 1937, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China, advancing towards the country’s largest cities. Within six weeks of capturing Nanjing, Japanese forces had killed more than 300,000 civilians. The atrocity became known as the Nanjing Massacre. Around the same time, Unit 731 was established– a secret Japanese military unit based near Harbin that subjected prisoners to inhumane experiments and developed biological weapons.

The Soviet Union was the first to come to China’s aid. Shipments of weapons, fuel, and ammunition were sent, while Soviet pilots and thousands of military advisers joined the fight against the Japanese invaders. By 1941 alone, China had received hundreds of aircraft and tens of thousands of pieces of weaponry.

By the final stage of the war, the two nations were fighting side by side. Chinese cadets trained at Soviet military academies, while Mao Zedong’s son, Mao Anying, served with the Red Army as it helped to liberate Europe from fascism. In August of 1945, Soviet troops dealt a decisive blow to the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria along with their Chinese allies. The victory over Japan in 1945 became a shared chapter of history for both Moscow and Beijing.

Anniversary of forced resignation of Danish nazi-collaborator government by workers and resistance movement

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On August 29, 1943, the Danish government that had collaborated with the German Nazi occupiers since the invasion on April 9, 1940, was forced to resign, thus ending the country’s shameful and cowardly policy.

Barricade on the main street of Copenhagen working class district, Nørrebro. The words painted on the asphalt reads “Ned med Hitler!” (Down with Hitler!)

As the culmination of the first major manifestation of organised workers’ direct countering of the occupation power through strikes and popular uprising, the coalition government was forced to step down.

Several events both inside and outside the Danish borders led to this.

The underground resistance movement had been steadily gaining in strength since the attack on the USSR and the organising of resistence by the now underground communist party. Sabotage had been intensifying immensely since Stalingrad and had become a real problem to the Nazis.

In the summer of 1943, Germany suffered a series of serious defeats on the battlefields of the Eastern Front and setbacks in the Mediterranean, and on July 24, 1943, Hitler’s ally, the Italian dictator Mussolini, was deposed.

An optimistic and rebellious mood arose in the Danish population. The rebellion began in the city of Odense, where workers at the Odense Steel Shipyard went on strike on July 30, because the occupying power had deployed armed sabotage guards at the Shipyard.

Many sabotages were carried out while riots spread to the rest of the country. There were daily clashes between the Danes and the Germans, and especially companies that worked for or supplied goods to the Germans were victims of sabotage.

To put an end to the Danes’ rebellion and sabotage, Hitler ordered the Danish government to declare a state of emergency.

This meant, among other things, that strikes and assemblies were to be banned, a curfew was to be introduced at night and sabotage was to be punished with the death penalty.

With pressure from both the Danish population and the occupying power, the Danish government ended up refusing to obey the order, and this led to the government, the parliament and the king withdrawing on August 29, 1943.

Ending the collaboration was a huge victory for the underground resistance movement, of which the communists made out the backbone and base. In the eyes of the population, it clearly demonstrated the strength of the patriotic front and its growing legitimacy as political force.

The communists, however, paid a high prize for the victory.

Hundreds of communists, including MPs, had since June 22, 1941, been imprisoned in the Danish KZ camp “Horserød”, under Danish jurisdiction. Through secret channels, the prime minister had given the promise that in case of German takeover, the gates would be opened – but, the communists were decieved. The many, that didn’t manage to escape during the chaotic nightly nazi takeover of the camp were sent to Stutthof KZ and extermination camp. Many didn’t return.

Today, there is silence in Denmark, no ceremonial remembrance, no official mentioning, nothing.

The collective history is deliberately being destroyed! Paving the way for fascism to rise again.

👉 From our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.
👉 Read also “2 Years” – A Danish Underground Publication from 1943!

Systemic sabotage – Maria Zaharova’s response to Mark Rutte

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Russian FM spokeswoman Maria Zaharova responded on the pages of newspaper “Izvestia” to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s statement on the refusal to recognise new territories within Russia. 11.08.2025

Demolition of ‘Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders’ in 2022.

Mark Rutte demanded in an interview with CBS to abandon the legal recognition of new territories within Russia and recalled a funny historical incident:

“We all remember that Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia had embassies in Washington from 1940 to 1991, which meant recognition of the actual control of the USSR over their territories, but never legally acceptance of this fact.”

The very case when misfortune helped: Rutte himself built the historical chain of the rebirth of Nazism into neo-Nazism…

Let’s begin.

In the 1920s and 1930s, as a result of anti-state coup, local fascist governments came to power in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia with the support of Germany and Italy. In 1940, they fled to the West and the democratic left forces came to power, which, having received a mandate from the people in the conditions of the outbreak of World War II, decided to join the USSR as national republics, that is, on equal terms with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and others.

Moscow responded favourably to the request of the people’s representatives of the Baltic countries who found themselves on the front line of the global confrontation. By the decisions of the VII session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (https://www.prlib.ru/item/716539) in August 1940, the Soviet Union took the Baltic peoples under its protection. When the Great Patriotic War began, many Soviet soldiers from all over the Union gave their lives for the freedom of the Baltic States from Nazism.

However, in Europe and the United States at that time, the democratic and free choice of the Balts was ignored. When the Nazis fled Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, they settled in the West.

The Estonian Nazis, with the support of the Hitlerites, formed their own pocket government in Oslo, and the Lithuanian and Latvian ones set up embassies in Washington, where they sat throughout the Cold War. They existed with the money of American taxpayers and with the support of the US Congress (Kersten Committee) and the State Department headed by First Deputy Secretary of State Sumner Welles.

For half a century, Americans supported these parasites while Soviet Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia developed (see also below), organised their lives, advanced their economies, enriched their culture, held festivals, competitions, and simply enjoyed life.

The Americans were not at all embarrassed that the heirs of the pro-fascist leftovers were being kept at their side and with their money, despite the fact that the USSR had repeatedly raised this issue with the United States. For Washington, this was an element of pressure on Moscow. A political construct with a rotten filling.

Rutte’s proposal is striking in its immorality, because he is nostalgic for the executioners of the Holocaust, who in the Baltic States did not lag behind the same elements as in Western Ukraine in their dehumanising work.

Demolition of ‘Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders’ in 2022.

And this is a systemic sabotage. The rehabilitation of anti-Soviet collaborators and other “forest brothers” guilty of crimes against civilians and complicity in the Holocaust has been conducted using (pseudo)legal basis. The Euro-Nazi leadership puts bloody executioners on a pedestal and approves the removal of monuments to those who liberated Europe from the brown plague. The rewritten Eurohistory casts doubt on the continued existence of memorials to the real victims of the “new heroes” — monuments at the site of the massacre in Ponary (Lithuania), the Klooga concentration camp (Estonia) and the Salaspils children’s concentration camp (Latvia).

The “United and impoverished Europe” has again relied on the creation of an aggressive belt of Russophobic regimes on the western borders of Russia. Rutte’s rhetoric is part of the ideological accompaniment of this fascization of the Western European part of the continent and the mobilisation of revanchist extremists who are already undergoing combat training in Ukraine.

Let me remind you that 20 years ago they tried to conduct the same experiment with the “Ichkerian emissaries”, for example in Britain, honouring terrorists as ambassadors or even presidents when their compatriots were bleeding in the Caucasus. It didn’t work out then, and it won’t work out now.

By the way, when is Rutte scheduled to receive the credentials of the ambassadors of Catalonia and Scotland?

How did Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia really fare as part of the Soviet Union?

🎙 Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova:
(from the weekly briefing on current foreign policy issues, July 24, 2025)

July 21 marked 85 years since the establishment of the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian Soviet Socialist Republics.
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25 Years of the tragic death of submarine “Kursk”

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We commemorated on out Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shiledmaiden” the quarter of the century that passed since the tragic death of Russia’s nuclear submarine “Kursk” and her crew. despite there being an official version of the events, there are many questions that remain. Questions that will remain unanswered for a long time still.

The Tragedy of the Nuclear Submarine “Kursk”: 25 Years Since the Legend’s Demise

On August 12, 2000, one of the most tragic and sadly well-known disasters in the history of the Russian and Soviet Navy occurred in the Barents Sea — the sinking of the nuclear submarine K-141 “Kursk.”

This tragedy left an indelible mark on the consciousness of the entire country and became a symbol of loss, courage, and heroism.

The “Kursk” was a nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine of project 949A, known in naval terminology as “Antey.” This 154-meter-long vessel was one of the most advanced submarines of its time. Its primary mission was to combat powerful enemy surface ships, particularly aircraft carrier groups. The crew consisted of 118 people, including officers, crew members, and employees of the manufacturing plant “Dagdiesel,” who participated in the technical support of the submarine.

In early August 2000, the “Kursk” set out to sea for Northern Fleet exercises. The main task was training missile launches and torpedo firing at training targets simulating the positions of a squadron of warships. The exercises involved the fleet’s best forces, including the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser “Admiral Kuznetsov” and the nuclear missile cruiser “Pyotr Veliky.”

On August 12, around 11:28, a series of powerful underwater explosions was recorded. The first explosion occurred in the submarine’s bow compartment.

❕According to official data, the cause was the explosion of an oxygen-kerosene mixture in a training torpedo 65-76A located in the fourth torpedo tube. Due to mishandling of the torpedoes, fuel leakage occurred, which caused the initial detonation of the ammunition. This first explosion triggered a second, much more powerful explosion of the torpedo warhead, which was 50 times stronger. It completely destroyed the bow section of the submarine and disabled it.

The Crew’s Fight for Survival

The explosions killed the crew in the front part of the submarine, including the command post, but 23 sailors managed to take refuge in the sealed ninth compartment. They continued to fight for the vessel’s survivability for six to eight hours, trying to establish contact with the outside world and await help.

Despite the submariners’ heroism, rescue attempts failed — contact with the submarine could not be established, and soon all 118 people perished.

Nation’s Reaction and Investigation

The sinking of the “Kursk” caused a wave of tragedy and outrage throughout Russia. The sailors’ families, military personnel, and ordinary citizens followed the rescue operation with hope, waiting for a miracle that never came. The rescue operation faced many technical difficulties due to the depth (about 108 meters) and weather conditions.

The investigation determined that the cause of the accident was a defect in the training torpedo, which was faulty and had not undergone proper inspection before use. The closure of the criminal case in 2002 did not end the discussions — alternative theories still circulate among experts and the public. These include possible collisions with a foreign submarine or accidental missile hits.

The submarine was raised from the seabed in 2001. The reactor compartment, which contained nuclear fuel and radioactive equipment, was safely dismantled and removed.

The sinking of the “Kursk” was a severe blow to the image of the Russian Navy, revealing many problems in safety systems, crew training, and naval equipment.

Memorials and monuments have been established in memory of the fallen sailors, and commemorative events are held annually. This tragedy became a symbol of the courage and selflessness of Russian sailors, as well as a lesson for the further development and improvement of naval service.

Source: Maria Pavlova, “Anna News”

We may never learn in our lifetimes what really happened to “Kursk”

There is a version that the death of the “Kursk” nuclear submarine was the result of an attack by a foreign submarine, and the truth was hidden so that the Third World War would not break out.
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False flag warning from Russian MoD for Chuguev in Harkov region

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From the Telegram channel of MoD Russia.
August 12, 2025.

⚡️According to available information received through several channels, the Kiev regime is preparing a provocation to foil the Russian-American talks scheduled for 15 August 2025.

To this end, on Monday, 11 August 2025, a group of journalists from foreign media under the cover of the legend of ‘preparing of a series of reports on residents of the city in the frontline zone’ has been delivered by the Security Service of Ukraine to the city of Chuguev (Kharkov region).

Immediately ahead of the summit on Friday, the Armed Forces of Ukraine plan a provocative strike using UAVs and missiles against one of the densely populated residential quarters or a hospital with a large number of civilian casualties, which will have to be immediately recorded by the foreign Western journalists.

As a result of the Kiev regime’s provocation, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will be considered fully responsible for the strikes and civilian casualties. This will create a negative media background and conditions for disrupting Russian-American cooperation on settling the conflict in Ukraine.

There may also be provocations in other settlements controlled by the Kiev regime.

Fresh evidence surfaces in Malaysian MH17 crash that killed 298 people in 2014. Reblog.

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Before you is a reblog of an article by Alan Moore, published on August 6, 2025 in Open Magazine. We thank our subscribers at the Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden” for bringing this new evidence about the MH17 disaster. This article is also available in Spanish at a Telegraph blog.

Follow the tag MH-17 for all the past publications on this topic at our blog.

Fresh evidence surfaces in Malaysian MH17 crash that killed 298 people in 2014

Revelations by Oleg Pulatov, who was acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence, raises new doubts about the Dutch investigation

Pulatov during the court hearing

When the Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down on July 17, 2014, I was in Voronezh, Russia. A week earlier I’d been in Europe and while sitting in my Viennese hotel watched various news channels reporting on the mess that was Donbass. It was personal for me. I’d been in Kiev in January 2014 and seen first-hand the nastier elements looking for reasons to be violent. Living in Voronezh I’d met refugees from Ukraine from April 2014 and by the time schools had started back on September 1, the initial trickle of human misery became a steady river. Yet MH17 terrified me, just the idea of flying and being shot down accidentally did affect my travel plans for a decade. It returned to my life when I was contacted by a man desperate to have his story heard.

Oleg Pulatov knew me as a sports journalist and one who was rather blunt about the scourge of corruption. From uncovering doping scandals to athlete abuse, match-fixing to financial funny business, he liked my work but was no fan of mine. Especially my “attack”, as he put it, on neo-Nazi elements within football fan groups in Ukraine in 2011 and 2012. Something I’d written about and cooperated with the BBC on exposing. The man, with family roots in the Donbass, didn’t take kindly to my blunt take on football hooligans and their nefarious activities, explaining that these were common criminals without ideology. Yet when he reached out last month about a potential story, there was a different vibe. He wanted to meet in person, something that made me wonder – why? And who is the man who’d criticised my writing in the past?

Who is Oleg Pulatov?

Born in Ulyanovsk (Russia), he was educated in Ukraine where his family come from. He was a military man his whole life, seeing combat in a number of theatres and was semi-retired when he objected to Kiev’s bombing of civilians in the Donbass. He joined the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) defence force, being elevated from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel. In July 2014 he was Deputy Head of the DPR’s Intelligence Directorate’s Special Operations Department and commanded a group of forces on the Snezhnoye-Marinovka frontline.

Due to his rank and position, he answered for the area where the aircraft came down. He arrived on the scene of the tragedy and immediately set up a ‘sanitary zone’ around the crash site. Oleg was one of four men later charged by a Dutch court with shooting down the airliner and the only one acquitted in November 2022. His voice was silenced in the process, which is not only his point of view.

As one lawyer from Eindhoven told me over the phone: “Given what he had to say, he was acquitted in the hope that he’d shut his mouth.” Oleg wanted to speak at his trial, he went unheard, 11 years after the tragedy, he needed to tell everything.

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“Blooming Youth” – the All-Union Sports parades on the Red Square in 1938 and 1939

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We present the All-Union Sports parades held on the Red Square in 1938 and 1939, with our translation of the 1938 event. The materials were initially published at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Blooming Youth (1938)

A newsreel depicting the All-Union Sports parade on the Red Square, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Lenin-Stalin Communist Union of Youth (Komsomol), which took place on July 24, 1938. It showed readiness to defend the Motherland. Many iconic marches and songs were performed, including “If Tomorrow Comes War” (see below).

Columns of athletes from Belarus, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, athletes from Voluntary sports societies pass in front of the audience.

On the podium of the Lenin Mausoleum, I. V. Stalin, K. E. Voroshilov, V. M. Molotov, S. M. Budyonny, M. I. Kalinin, A. A. Andreev, A. I. Mikoyan, L. M. Kaganovich, N. A. Bulganin, Hero of the Soviet Union pilot M. M. Gromov. This is one of the first Soviet colour films.


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Trivia:

The film, directed by Nikolai Solovyov, is originally in colour. According to the information on the Internet, the film was shot using the three-colour method. However, according to Wikipedia, the first film shot with a three-film camera “CKS-1” of domestic make, was “Blooming Youth” created in 1939, presented below. That is a different film with a similar title, also about the Red Square parade, but held a year later, it has been preserved in decent quality.

The method of shooting the 1938 film “Blooming Youth” requires further clarification.

This film was shown in the 90s on the “Kultura” TV channel. An incomplete recording was wide-spread on the Internet, ending at the 20th minute. Thanks to the newly digitised VHS recording, which was made at the same time, it was possible to restore the full version of the film. Source.

If Tomorrow Comes War

This is the theme song from the 1938 film of the same title. The film celebrates Soviet military power and shows the Soviet people what the war will be like when the imperialists attack the USSR – fast, victorious, almost bloodless. The film is based on documentary footage shot during real manoeuvrers of the Red Army, and play episodes with actors.
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Iosif Stalin’s Toast Dedicated to the Great Russian People. May 24, 1945

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Reading time: 4 minutes

On May 24, 1945, at a reception in the Georgievsky Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace in honour of the commanders of the Soviet forces, Stalin delivered his famous toast, a dedication to the Russian people. This is an article, translated from the Two Wars blog on Dzen, telling the story of the toast.

No photographs or videos were taken of this banquet, for ethical reasons: the entire country was starving and in ruins, and suddenly there was a lavish meal with delicacies.

There was no sound recording either, just a transcript. But later it was heavily processed for newspaper publications. There are 31 toasts recorded in this transcript. Of these, five belonged to Stalin. There are 28 toasts left in the official report (only 2 of them are by Stalin).

This includes the last banquet speech, which the leader delivered well after midnight. By the way, he was not allowed to speak at all.

Because as soon as Stalin stood up and tried to speak, his words were drowned out by a sea of applause (as recalled by a participant in the banquet, the famous aircraft designer Alexander Yakovlev). His last, widely known speech about the Russian people was constantly interrupted by a barrage of long-lasting applause, so the toast took almost half an hour to deliver.

Mihail Hmelko, “A Toast to the Great Russian People”, 1947

The last toast of the banquet, later corrected by the leader

Here is the text (in the corrected and officially approved form):

Comrades, allow me to raise one last toast.

I would like to raise a toast to the health of our Soviet people and, above all, to the health of the Russian people.

I drink first and foremost to the health of the Russian people because they are the most outstanding nation of all the nations that make up the Soviet Union.

I raise a toast to the health of the Russian people because they have earned the general recognition of the Soviet Union as the leading force among all the peoples of our country.

I raise a toast to the health of the Russian people, not only because they are a leading nation, but also because they have a clear mind, a steadfast character, and patience.

Our government has made many mistakes, and we have had moments of desperation in 1941 – 1942, when our army retreated and abandoned our villages and cities in Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldavia, the Leningrad region, the Baltic states, and the Karelian-Finnish Republic, because there was no other option. A different people might have said to their government, “You have failed to meet our expectations, so go away, and we will install a new government that will make peace with Germany and bring us quiet life.”

But the Russian people did not agree to this, because they believed in the correctness of their government’s policies, and they made sacrifices to ensure the defeat of Germany. This trust of the Russian people in the Soviet government proved to be the decisive force that ensured the historic victory over the enemy of humanity – fascism.

Thank you, Russian people, for this trust!

To the health of the Russian people!

What exactly was fixed?

The leader made the edits to the original version of the toast himself before sending it to the press. What did he change in his speech? It’s not a secret: the original version of the transcript has been preserved.
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German POW convoy through Moscow (July 17, 1944)

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Reading time: 3 minutes

The 10-minute-long 1944 documentary went under the title «The convoy of the German POWs through Moscow» and show both the preparatory part and the actual passage of the «Parade of the Vanquished», which took place on July 17, 1944. 57,600 German soldiers and officers captured during Operation Bagration marched along the Garden Ring and other streets of the Russian capital. Among the prisoners were 19 generals, leading the column in uniforms adorned with medals. Watering vehicles followed the procession, symbolically cleansing the ‘dirt’ from the roads.

The event, showcasing the Soviet Union’s strength in WWII, left a lasting impact on the citizens of Moscow and international observers.


Backup at Rumble.

👉 At 6:41 one can see the entrance to the exhibition “Trophies of the Great Battles” at Gorky Park, a documentary about which we translated earlier.

The material is also available at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”

One can read a detailed account of the event in an article “Parade of the Vanquished” at TopWar:

Hitler’s generals on Gorky Street, escorted by NKVD soldiers.

17 July 1944, Moscow residents were shocked by the appearance of a column of Nazis in the city. “Operation Big Waltz” – this code, apparently, the unofficial name of this indicative action in the NKVD.

Its participants are generals, officers and soldiers of the German fascist army group Center, utterly defeated in the summer of 1944, in the Belarusian strategic offensive operation Bagration. The losses of the enemy turned out to be much higher than in the “Stalingrad catastrophe”. However, the allied press expressed great doubt in such an impressive defeat of the Nazis. The information war has already gained momentum …

It was then that in the leadership of the USSR the idea was ripe to demonstrate to the world the successes of the Red Army and to carry a huge mass of German prisoners led by their beaten generals through the streets of Moscow.

“Show them to the whole world.”

In the epic “Liberation: the direction of the main attack” there is a short but apparently historical episode: Stalin, after hearing the report of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Army General Alexei Antonov (“MIC”, No. 17, 2017) about the defeat of the German fascist troops in Belarus, in its characteristic manner, says quietly: “You take prisoners, and neither enemies nor allies believe you. Do not hide your prisoners, show them, let everyone see. ”

Why was the operation called the Great Waltz? Maybe because the main element of this ballroom dance is spinning in a circle? After all, the movement of the column of prisoners of the Nazis was also planned in a large circle – along the Garden Ring …

👉 Continue reading at TopWar…

Full reconstruction of the historic Victory Day Parade on June 24, 1945 on Red Square in Moscow – with Georgy Zhukov’s speech

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Reading time: 7 minutes

This is the full reconstructed version of the 1945 Victory Day Parade. While the film is in Russian, it is well worth watching it, even without understanding the language — to feel the atmosphere of Victory of 1945!

🎞 Together with the Russian State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents, the editorial office has done a unique job. Frame by frame, the chronicle of the entire festive day of June 24, 1945 has been gathered together — from the earliest morning to the evening fireworks. A lot of new authentic information from archives has been added to the program, the logic and sequence of actions have been restored.

📽 All the film footage taken during the legendary Parade has been found and digitised: there were about one and a half thousand meters of it! 72 cameramen were working on Red Square that day, and only a small fraction of their footage was later included in a previously widely known documentary. The rest was kept in special storage for many years. Now, we have managed to restore the whole picture of what was happening on and around Red Square at that time.

In fact, this is the first full-scale video recording of a real event in the history of our country, which everyone will be able to see only 75 years later.

“It’s an amazing, magical feeling. It’s like we’ve invented a time machine, and together we can travel back to that rainy day in 1945 to follow everything that happened in the heart of Moscow. So far, the whole world has seen either a 50-minute version of those events or a short 18-minute color documentary. We managed to put together almost three hours, minute by minute. This is a fantastic opportunity to plunge into the real atmosphere that prevailed at that time, to see the unedited.”

Thanks to experts and music historians, precisely those military marches and the music that really sounded that day are being played. Historical archival footage and musical accompaniment have been carefully recreated and restored manually by POBEDA TV channel.

The parade on June 24, 1945 in Moscow is a triumph of the Soviet people who defeated Nazi Germany. The Victory Day Parade was hosted by Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov. Marshal of The Soviet Union Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky commanded the Parade. Colonel-General Pavel Artemievich Artemyev, commander of the Moscow Military District and head of the Moscow garrison, led the entire event. The movement of the troops was accompanied by a huge orchestra of 1,400 people!

The text is read by the legends of Soviet television:
👉 People’s Artist of the USSR Igor Leonidovich Kirillov,
👉 People’s Artist of the RSFSR Anna Nikolaevna Shatilova,
👉 Honoured Artist of the RSFSR Dina Anatolyevna Grigorieva.

The unedited speech by Marshal Georgy Zhukov at the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945

As we told in the introduction to the black-and-white edition of the parade, Georgy Zhukov’s speech was “destalinised” during Hrushev’s era, removing all references to the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Army, Marshal of the Soviet Union Iosif Stalin. The reconstructed footage of the parade, presented a longer, un-redacted speech by Zhukov. We translated the speech, which was followed by performance of the Anthem of the USSR.


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Still, this was not the complete recording of the speech, as we saw when studying the Russian transcript. We noticed omission of two very important fragments, important in these times when the West is rewriting the history of WWII!

Below is the complete translation of Georgy Zhukov’s speech, with the missing portions highlighted as quotation blocks.

Comrades of the Red Army and Red Navy, sergeants and petty officers, officers of the Army and Navy, generals and admirals!

Comrade workers, collective farmers, workers of science, technology and art, employees of the Soviet institutions and enterprises!
Comrades in arms!
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Victory Parade in Moscow on June 24, 1945. With English subtitles and in colour

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Reading time: 16 minutes

On June 24, 1945, the first parade dedicated to the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War was held in Moscow on the Red Square. The combined regiments of the fronts, the combined regiment of the people’s Commissariat of defence, the combined regiment of the Navy, military academies, military schools, and the troops of the Moscow garrison were brought to the Victory Parade. The parade was commanded by Marshal of the Soviet Union K. K. Rokossovsky, and the parade was taken by Marshal of the Soviet Union G. K. Zhukov. From the podium of the Lenin Mausoleum, Stalin watched the parade, as well as Molotov, Kalinin, Voroshilov, Budyonny and other members of the Politburo.

We celebrated the 80th anniversary of the Victory Parade at our Telegram channel “Beorn And the Shieldmaiden”, starting at this post.

From the Telegram post of the Russian Foreign Ministry:

During the preparations for the Parade 12 regiments were created and trained, representing all the Red Army Fronts that took part in the fighting against the Nazi invaders. Each regiment included over 1,000 distinguished & honoured Red Army soldiers and officers, Heroes of the Soviet Union and cavaliers of the Order of Glory.

The ceremony involved in total 298 infantry platoons, 13 cavalry squadrons, and 350 artillery batteries, including 386 guns and 613 armoured vehicles. Commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Pavel Artemyev, was in charge of organising and overseeing the Parade.

The Victory Parade began at 10 am and lasted for two hours. Soviet Union Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky commanded the units, while Marshal Georgy Zhukov reviewed the parade teams. The Parade was in many aspects highly symbolic, even as regards the breeds and colours of the horses rode by the two great Soviet Marshals — Zhukov rode a light grey Tersk horse as a symbol of glory and victory, while Rokossovsky rode a black horse symbolising honour and grace.

After the Marshals reviewed the units and greeted the participants, a military orchestra with 1,400 musicians marched into the centre of Red Square to perform “Glory,” a patriotic song composed by Mikhail Glinka. Georgy Zhukov then ascended the podium on the Lenin Mausoleum to deliver his famous address:

“Mankind has been liberated from German Nazism — humanity’s deadliest enemy.

For three years, the Red Army had to fight against Germany and its satellites on its own. Throughout the entire war, the Nazi army had to keep its main forces on the Soviet-German front — this is where the Reich’s war machine was crushed, and this is where the victorious ending of the war in Europe came from.”

When Marshal Zhukov concluded his remarks, the state orchestra performed the national anthem, and 50 rounds of fireworks were fired from the Kremlin walls. This is when the Red Army columns — over 40’000 soldiers and officers and 1,850 units of armour vehicles and military equipment.

At the end of the celebrations, to the sound of 80 drums beating, a column of Soviet soldiers threw 200 banners of the defeated Nazi Wehrmacht onto the ground near the Mausoleum. These banners had been selected by a special commission from among 900 trophy banners brought from Germany.

The Parade ended at noon to the tune of the Moscow Garrison’s composite brass orchestra. Overall, 24 marshals, 249 generals, 2,536 officers, and 31,116 non-commissioned officers and soldiers took part in the procession. The celebrations culminated with an image of the Order of Victory floating in the sky.

After the June 24, 1945, the Victory Day parades were held in the USSR 3 more times – at the anniversary dates on the May 9, 1965, 1985 and 1990. Next time it was conducted in already Russia on the 9th of May 1995, and then annually after that date. In the USSR military parades were customarily held annually on the 7th of November, commemorating the October Revolution.

While translating Zhukov’s speech, based on the Russian transcript here, we found a disconcerting detail: the B/W documentary was edited to remove any reference to Stalin’s contribution and guidance! It seems the editing was done during the time, when Hrushev waged his personal vendetta against Stalin’s memory. The colour version, though it does not include Zhukov’s speech, has Stalin “rehabilitated” and properly referenced.

‼️ It was only on the 75th anniversary of the Victory, that Georgy Zhukov’s speech could be heard for the first time without redactions — in the two and a half reconstructed video of the Day of the Victory Parade, presented in a separate article.


Backup at Rumble. An older version on YouTube

This film was the first colour film in the USSR, shot on single tape (previously, a three-colour method was used for colour films). The Victory parade on June 24, 1945 was filmed on German trophy film from the warehouse of “Agfa”. After the film was shot, it turned out that most of the tape had colour defects. As the colour films were not made in the USSR, there was not enough experience in working on colour correction. Therefore, the entire film was transferred to B/W film, and a 19-minute film was edited from the material that was of suitable quality. And many years later, in 2004, the Central State Archive of Film and Photo Documents restored the colour version of the film. The film was restored, removing all mechanical damage to the film, restoring the colour and transferring the image to modern colour film.


Backup at Rumble. An older version on YouTube

👉 Source of the B/W is the USSR State Television and Radio Fund via the Russian MFA.

The article was originally published on May 9, 2020 with video uploaded to YouTube Back then, in order to re-upload the film the subtitles, the footage of the B/W film was downloaded from the Classics of the Soviet Cinema YouTube channel. There was one quote in a viewer comment there, which was especially poignant (note that 9 million is the number of combatant losses according to the early estimates after the war, the total number of the Soviet citizens who lost their lives during the Great Patriotic War is 27 million people):

Once my father expressed a piercing and terrible thought: “Ten thousand soldiers and officers of the armies and fronts participated at the principal Parade in honour of the Victory Day on June 24, 1945. The passage of the parade “boxes” of troops lasted thirty minutes. And you know what I thought? During the four years of the war, the losses of our army amounted to almost nine million dead. And each one of them, who gave the most precious thing to Victory – their lives! – is worthy to walk in that parade on the Red Square. So, if all the dead were put in parade formation, then these “boxes” would go through Red Square for nineteen days… ” and I suddenly, as if in reality, imagined this parade. Parade “boxes” of twenty by ten. One hundred and twenty steps a minute. In windings and boots, overcoats, and jackets, in caps, earflaps, “budenovki”, helmets, caps. And for nineteen days and nights this continuous stream of fallen battalions, regiments, and divisions would have passed through the Red Square. Parade of the heroes, parade of the winners. Think about it! Nineteen days!
— V. Shurygin

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