Russian journalist backs Belsat TV reporter: Putin’s Night Wolves adherents of ‘Great Victory’ cult
Alexander Nevzorov, a well-known Russian journalist, called Vladimir Putin’s close friend Alexander ‘Khirurg’ Zaldostanov ‘a victim to the cult of the Great Victory’ when asked about the provocativity of the question the Belsat TV reporter posed to the leader of the Russian motorcycle club ‘The Night Wolves’.
The Wolves were denied entry to Poland on May 1, 2016. The group was set to get to Berlin on May 9, Russia’s Victory Day, and ‘pay tribute to the soldiers who won a victory over Nazi Germany’, but they had to return to Belarus and share their impressions with journalists instead.
When Belsat TV contributor Ales Lyauchuk said the USSR was Hitler’s ally at the beginning of the Second World War and referred to the Nazi-Soviet Pact signed in August 1939, Alexander Zaldostanov could not come up with any sensible answer and pushed Mr Lyauchuk away saying ‘Bugger off!’.
“Now we know about the cooperation between Stalin’s and Hitler’s troops (joint assault on Brest, parades, praising each other in mass media, etc). At present, there is a cult of ‘Victory’ which does not want to have anything to do with historic evidence. As Kautsky [German economist and historian] said, all cults are created a few decades after people forget what was indeed the case. And to make a cult stronger, one should erase the truth, because it is unpleasant, dirty, chopping and not so heroic as they would like it to be. And Zaldostanov does not want to know the truth,” Alexander Nevzorov told Russian TV station ‘Dozhd’ (Rain).
According to Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, the question put by the Belsat TV reporter hit the mark:
“The question was absolutely correct, because Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union supported each other at the beginning of the Second World War, that is a given. But this, however, does not change the fact that Britain and France were waging a strange war and were not going to do something to save Poland, thereby playing into Hitler’s hands. I think Zaldostanov might have been very upset over not being let into Berlin, that is why he could not find any sensible answer. I do not understand why they should go to Berlin! For unknown reason they never hold motorcycle races in Russia.”
As reported earlier, Chairman of the BPF Party Alyaksei Yanukevich sent to the Prosecutor General a statement demanding to recognize the Russian club ‘The Night Wolves’ as extremist organization. The basis for the statement became the recent statement Alexander Zaldostanov made. He said that “Belarus is Russia”.
