Blackmail

34 MOSCOW

As the sun climbed into a cloudless sky, President Yuri Kalinin sat in the front row of a grandstand in Red Square, looking on in silence as troops in crisp formations, interspersed with Russia’s most advanced military hardware, passed by. Flanking Kalinin were the leaders of thirty countries, joining Russia’s celebration of the Soviet Union’s victory over Germany in World War II. Behind Kalinin and occupying a prominent place in the grandstand were the surviving Red Army officers who had defeated the Wehrmacht.

Seventy-five years ago, the Soviet Union had bled for the West, and it was Russia, and not the United States, that had defeated Germany. In June 1944, as the Allies invaded Normandy, the German Army defended its Western Front with sixty-six divisions. At the same time, Germany deployed 150 divisions along the Eastern Front, opposing the Red Army’s advance. Had Germany been able to transfer another 150 divisions to Normandy, or even a third of those, the Wehrmacht would have annihilated the Allied invaders.

Even with Germany opposing the Red Army with three-fourths of its military, it was the Soviet Union that pushed Germany back to its capital, taking Berlin and Hitler’s bunker, where the dictator committed suicide in the final hours of the conflict. The Soviet Union had bled for the West, its contribution to defeating Nazi Germany minimized by American historians.

The West’s memory, in addition to being inaccurate, was short; they no longer held commemorations of their role during World War II. In the West, World War II was a distant memory, the sacrifices of its people nothing more now than a footnote in history books. In contrast, Russia held annual Victory Day parades and remembrance marches, keeping the memory of its sacrifices alive.

Russia would not forget.

As the last light of day faded on the horizon, Yuri Kalinin stood on a third-floor balcony of the Kremlin Senate, his hands on the cold granite railing. As his eyes moved over the city, they came to rest on Red Square, where the crowds were dwindling after the day’s activities. It was there that he’d begun and ended the day’s celebrations, beginning with the Victory Day parade and ending with the March of the Immortal Regiment, where Kalinin led the annual citizens’ remembrance march through the city, leading a procession of over one million relatives and descendants of those who lost their lives in the Great Patriotic War.

The painful memories of the conflict weighed heavily on the Russian psyche, something the West seemed incapable of understanding. The United States, for example, extolled its Greatest Generation — those who fought in World War II — along with their enormous sacrifice: over four hundred thousand dead. A sacrifice that paled in comparison with the Soviet Union’s: seven million military personnel killed, along with twenty million civilians as the German Army exterminated ethnic groups during their occupation and razed entire cities to the ground as they retreated.

Twenty-seven million.

And these were the casualties from just the last invasion by a Western European power. First the Poles in the seventeenth century, followed by Napoleon’s army in the nineteenth century, with both armies sacking Moscow. The French Army had occupied the Kremlin Senate; Napoleon had stood on this very same balcony and watched Moscow burn.

Never again.

Russia would never again endure the genocide of its people or the destruction of its cities. Following World War II, the Soviet Union established a buffer zone of Eastern European governments friendly to the Soviet Union. The next time the West invaded Russia, there would be advance warning as troops moved through the Eastern European countries on Russia’s border, and next time, the war would be fought on another country’s soil. Unfortunately, the buffer zones to the west had eroded since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Baltic States had joined NATO, and now Ukraine, Russia’s longtime ally, was turning to the West. It was time Russia rectified the situation, re-forming a buffer zone of friendly provinces to the west, even if that meant employing its military.

Kalinin looked to the side as Boris Chernov joined him on the balcony. Chernov stood beside him in silence for a moment before speaking.

“All preparations are complete,” he said. “You must decide, Yuri.”

Kalinin’s eyes swept across Russia’s capital again before coming to rest on Red Square, where the March of the Immortal Regiment ended.

Twenty-seven million dead.

Never again.

Kalinin turned to Chernov. “You may proceed.”