There are topics where the argument begins not with facts, but with substitution. As soon as you say that the ‘Immortal Regiment’ in its current form has become part of Russian state propaganda, a convenient accusation immediately arises: so, you are against the memory of the fallen.
But this is a false argument.
The question is not whether it is possible to remember grandfathers, grandmothers, parents, soldiers, partisans, prisoners, the dead, and the survivors. They not only can be remembered — they must be remembered. The question is different: is it permissible to take personal family memory, subordinate it to a state scenario, surround it with military symbolism, slogans about ‘repeating’ the war, portraits of dictators, and use all this as moral cover for new aggression.
This is where the boundary lies.
Memory — yes.
Cult of war — no.
Portraits of relatives — yes.
Using the deceased to justify new deaths — no.
From family memory to state ritual
How personal history became part of the political machine
When the ‘Immortal Regiment’ was just gaining fame, it seemed to many as a natural and even touching form of family memory. People came out with photographs of relatives who went through World War II, died at the front, died from wounds, survived occupation, blockade, camps, evacuation, hunger, and post-war devastation.
There was nothing shameful in this. Moreover, the very idea of returning specific faces to the history of the great war could be deep and human.
After all, state parades always speak the language of technology, banners, generals, and dates. Family memory speaks differently: here is my grandfather, here is my grandmother, here is the person who did not return, here is the person who returned but remained silent all his life about what he saw. Such memory does not require loud slogans. It is held on a photograph, a name, a family story, and a pause.
But in recent years, the ‘Immortal Regiment’ is increasingly perceived not as a spontaneous civic initiative but as an element of the state policy of the Russian Federation.
Events under this brand no longer look like spontaneous acts of memory. Their organization, symbolism, routes, public scenarios, and informational support are increasingly associated with official and semi-official Russian structures: diplomatic missions, ‘Russian Houses’, the Russian Military Historical Society, networks like ‘Victory Volunteers’, pro-Russian cultural organizations, and influence structures among the ‘Russian-speaking’ diaspora.
It is this transition that changes the meaning of what is happening.
When a person keeps a photograph of his grandfather at home — this is family memory.
When a person comes to the cemetery, lights a candle, reads Kaddish, stands silently at the grave, or tells children the family story — this is memory.
But when portraits of the deceased are integrated into the state ritual of a country that today is waging an aggressive war against Ukraine, helping its ally Iran and other terrorists, destroying cities, occupying territories, and simultaneously calling its war a ‘fight against Nazism’, memory ceases to be just memory. It turns into a political resource.
Why symbolism changes meaning
The ‘Immortal Regiment’ cannot be considered separately from the visual language that surrounds it.
Soviet uniforms, Russian flags, St. George ribbons, military songs, portraits of Stalin, slogans ‘we can repeat’, children in pilot caps and tunics — all these are no longer neutral elements. In the modern context, they work not as a language of mourning, but as a language of mobilization.
The formula ‘we can repeat’ is especially dangerous.
If we are talking about World War II, the Holocaust, destroyed cities, millions of dead, blockades, deportations, mass executions, and death camps, then the normal moral reaction should be different: it cannot be repeated. Never again. Never again. Neither against us nor against others.
‘We can repeat’ sounds not like a memory of tragedy, but as a readiness to enter catastrophe again, to make war the norm again, to turn human life into expendable material for the state again.
This is the main substitution.
World War II was not only a military victory. It was a terrible human catastrophe. Millions of dead. Destroyed cities. Burned villages. Ghettos. Mass shootings. Concentration camps. Deportations. Hunger. Traumatized generations who lived for decades with what they could not tell even their children.
The victims of Nazism and Stalinism were people of different nationalities: Jews, Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians, Russians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Armenians, Georgians, Moldovans, peoples of Europe, peoples of the Caucasus, peoples of Central Asia, and many others.
No one has a monopoly on this memory.
That is why the Kremlin’s attempt to present Victory as almost the exclusive property of modern Russia is not just a political manipulation. It is a historical falsification and disrespect for the contribution of other peoples.
The Kremlin appropriates not only Victory but also grief
Russian propaganda has long been trying to privatize 1945. But today it is not only about appropriating Victory. The Kremlin is trying to appropriate grief itself.
It appoints itself as the main custodian of memory. It decides who ‘remembers correctly’ and who allegedly ‘betrays memory’. It turns disagreement with modern Russian policy into ‘Russophobia’, ‘fascism’, or ‘insult to veterans’.
This is a very convenient scheme.
If memory belongs only to the Kremlin, then any objection to its war can be declared an attack on Victory. If the Russian army supposedly inherits the army of 1945, then any of its new aggression receives a false aura of historical righteousness. If Ukraine is declared ‘Nazi’ only because it resists the Russian invasion, then the war against it is presented not as aggression, but as a continuation of the ‘Great Patriotic’.
This is how history turns into a weapon.
The full-scale war against Ukraine since 2022 has been integrated by the Kremlin into the rhetoric of ‘fighting Nazism’. This is not an accidental propaganda formula, but a central part of Russian military mythology. The past victory is used to create the illusion of moral right to new wars.
But victory over one evil does not give the right to become the source of new evil.
No memory of 1945 justifies the destruction of Mariupol, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipro, Odesa, Kyiv, and other Ukrainian cities. No photograph of a front-line soldier can be a moral permission for new occupations, new missiles, new mass graves, and new funerals.
Foreign actions as a picture for Moscow
A separate question is the ‘Immortal Regiment’ outside of Russia.
For some participants, this may remain a personal gesture. Someone really comes with a photograph of a father, grandfather, or grandmother. Someone wants to remember family history. Someone grew up in the Soviet tradition of ‘May 9’ and does not always realize how much the political context has changed after the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
But the political machine works differently.
Mass marches abroad are used as visual proof of allegedly broad international support for Russia. Photos and videos then live their own lives: they are shown to the Russian audience, used on social networks, inserted into propaganda stories, turned into an argument: look, we are supported in Europe, in Israel, in America, and among the diaspora.
So one person comes with memory, and the state machine takes away a propaganda shot from the event.
This is especially cynical because the personal pain of the participants can be sincere. The problem is not with the grandmother with a photograph of a deceased father. The problem is with the state that puts this photograph in line with the slogans of a new war.
When grief becomes a weapon
Historical parallels: not a copy, but a mechanism
There are historical parallels to turning memory into a political tool. It is important to bring them carefully: not to say that all situations are the same, but to show the common mechanism.
After World War I, fascist Italy turned the memory of the fallen into a cult of heroic sacrifice. Grief for the dead was gradually subordinated to the idea of national mobilization, discipline, strength, and readiness for new wars. The dead became not only an object of memory but also an argument in favor of future aggression.
In Nazi Germany, the trauma of defeat in World War I, the myth of ‘betrayal at the rear’, and the feeling of national humiliation became fuel for revanchism. The memory of the past war was used not as a warning against a new catastrophe, but as an emotional base for it.
In France, the Vichy regime used the figure of Marshal Petain, the hero of Verdun, to legitimize a new authoritarian order. The military glory of the past helped cover political capitulation and cooperation with Nazi Germany.
In Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine became an example of how a place of memory can turn into a political symbol if, along with the fallen soldiers, convicted war criminals are honored there. For China and South Korea, this is not just an internal Japanese ritual, but a sign of a dangerous attitude towards past militarism.
In all these cases, we are talking about a similar mechanism: grief is turned into a cult, the cult into mobilization, mobilization into justification for new policies.
That is why it is important to look not only at the words ‘we remember’, but also at what stands next to this memory. If slogans of strength, revenge, the cult of the army, children in uniform, and justification of modern aggression appear next to it, then memory is already being used not for warning, but for preparing society for a new norm of war.
Portraits of the deceased: where the Jewish and ethical boundary lies
It is worth separately mentioning the carrying of portraits of the deceased.
In itself, this is not something forbidden or immoral. If a person carries a photograph of their relative as a personal sign of memory, it can be a worthy form of commemoration. In Jewish tradition, memory of the deceased occupies an important place: yahrzeit, Kaddish, memorial candle, visiting the grave, tzedakah, and good deeds in honor of the deceased.
But here again, context is important.
The portrait of the deceased should not turn into a cult of the deceased, a political icon, or part of mass worship of the state. The deceased cannot give consent for their face to be carried next to slogans ‘we can repeat’, Russian flags, portraits of Stalin, or the symbolism of a state that today is waging a new war.
In Judaism, there is the concept of the dignity of the deceased — kavod ha-met. It requires respect, restraint, and truth. The deceased person should not become an instrument of someone else’s political campaign.
Therefore, the formula can be very simple.
Judaism does not prohibit a portrait as a sign of memory. But Judaism does not accept turning the portrait of the deceased into a political weapon.
Memory of the dead cannot be used as permission for new deaths.
Judaism: memory should lead to responsibility
From the point of view of Jewish tradition, memory is not a decorative ritual and not a cult of strength. It is a moral obligation.
Jewish memory of the Exodus from Egypt is not given to glorify power or victory for the sake of victory. It constantly returns to the moral conclusion: you yourself were a slave, you yourself were a stranger, you yourself were powerless — therefore, do not oppress another.
This is fundamentally different from the imperial logic of memory.
The empire says: we suffered, therefore now we have the right.
Judaism says otherwise: you remember suffering, therefore you are obliged to be more careful with power, violence, and humiliation of another.
Of course, Judaism is not absolute pacifism. Protection of life is permitted and obligatory. In Jewish tradition, there is a place for self-defense, the army, protection of the community, and the state. Israel as a state exists in a reality where security is not an abstraction.
But there is a huge difference between protecting life and the cult of war.
Protection of life is a duty.
Romanticizing war is a danger.
Memory of the fallen is a duty.
Using the fallen to justify new fallen is a moral distortion.
From the point of view of Jewish tradition, memory of war should be an act of awe, responsibility, and truth. If memory is turned into a cult of strength, a political spectacle, and justification for new aggression, it ceases to be memory and becomes idolatry before the state, army, and violence.
For Israel, this is especially sensitive.
Memory of World War II here is inseparable from memory of the Holocaust. And Jewish memory of the Holocaust is built not on the slogan ‘we can repeat’, but on the formula ‘never again’.
Moreover, ‘never again’ should not mean only ‘never against us’. In a moral sense, this is a warning against dehumanization, mass violence, imperial lies, deportations, destruction of cities, and turning people into material for state purposes.
For Jewish memory, the main lesson of war is not ‘we can repeat’, but ‘it cannot be repeated’.
Children in uniform: memory or rehearsal of loyalty
It is especially alarming when children are involved in such rituals.
A child in military uniform at a memory event looks impressive for the camera. But the question is what meaning is conveyed to him. Does he learn about the cost of war, about fear, about hunger, about the dead, about the Holocaust, about destroyed families? Or is he offered to play the role of a little soldier in a beautiful historical production?
If a child is given a pilot cap, uniform, and the slogan ‘we can repeat’, this is no longer a lesson of memory. This is a rehearsal of political loyalty.
Thus, war ceases to be a tragedy and becomes a children’s performance. And this is one of the most dangerous forms of militarization of consciousness: the child does not yet understand history, but is already emotionally involved in the cult of strength.
Ukraine as the main context of today’s argument
Without Ukraine, it is impossible to understand why the ‘Immortal Regiment’ is perceived differently today than ten or fifteen years ago.
If it were only about family commemoration, the argument would be different. But Russia today is waging a full-scale war against Ukraine and simultaneously uses the language of World War II to explain this aggression. The Kremlin calls Ukrainian resistance ‘Nazism’, Russian invasion ‘liberation’, and the destruction of foreign cities ‘continuation of the historical mission’.
This makes any mass actions under Russian state symbolic control politically charged.
For Ukraine, this is not an argument about the past. This is a question of today’s life and death.
When in an Israeli, European, or American (or another country) city an event with Russian symbolism and slogans about Victory takes place, and nearby Ukrainians mourn those killed by Russian missiles, a moral conflict arises. Memory of victory over one aggressor is used as a cover for another aggressor — the one acting now.
That is why the key formula should sound clear:
We are for memory, but against its use for new wars.
Israel, Latrun, and the uncomfortable question of someone else’s ritual
Netanyahu, Putin, and the 2018 frame
In this topic, there is an uncomfortable Israeli episode that cannot be ignored.
On May 9, 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu participated in the ‘Immortal Regiment’ march in Moscow alongside Putin and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Reports of that event indicated that Putin carried a portrait of his front-line father, Vučić a portrait of his grandfather, and Netanyahu carried a portrait of Wolf Vilensky, a Jewish World War II veteran, Hero of the Soviet Union, who lived in Israel after the war.
It is important to describe this episode accurately.
Netanyahu did not walk with a portrait of his ancestor. He carried a portrait of a Jewish veteran. And in 2018, such a gesture could be explained by respect for the memory of Jews who fought against Nazism and the desire to emphasize the Jewish contribution to Victory.
But after the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine, this frame is read differently.
Not because the memory of Wolf Vilensky has become less important. On the contrary: that’s why it cannot be given to the Kremlin.
The problem is different. The Israeli prime minister could enter this ritual with one logic — the memory of Jewish front-line soldiers, a diplomatic gesture, a historical symbol. The Kremlin received something else: a picture where the leader of the Jewish state is inside the Russian state Victory ritual.
This is how Moscow’s symbolic politics works.
One participant comes with memory.
The other uses this memory as proof of their own historical correctness.
Was this pressure from Moscow?
It is important here not to assert what cannot be proven.
Without reliable documents, one cannot write that Netanyahu acted “under direct pressure from Moscow.” This is a weak and vulnerable formulation.
It is much more accurate to speak about the diplomatic context.
In 2018, Israel was forced to take into account the Russian military presence in Syria. For Jerusalem, relations with Moscow were connected not only with ceremonies and historical memory but also with security issues: the freedom of action of the IDF against Iranian entrenchment in Syria, arms supplies to Hezbollah, and threats on Israel’s northern borders.
Therefore, Netanyahu’s participation in the Moscow ceremony can be seen as a gesture dictated not only by memory but also by foreign policy calculation.
The formula here should be careful:
Netanyahu could go there from the logic of Israel’s security. The Kremlin used this frame from the logic of its propaganda.
This does not justify or cancel the question. On the contrary, it makes it even more important.
Even if a foreign leader enters the Kremlin ritual for pragmatic reasons, the result may be used not by them, but by Moscow. Even the honest memory of one participant can be absorbed by the propaganda machine of another state.
The story with Netanyahu shows that the “Immortal Regiment” is not only a Russian internal topic. It is a trap for foreign leaders, diasporas, communities, and states that enter the ritual with their memory and come out as part of the Kremlin’s picture.
Why this is especially important for the Israeli audience
For Israel, the issue of memory of World War II is not a distant European topic.
Here live families of immigrants from the former USSR, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, the Baltic states, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Middle Eastern countries, Eastern and Western Europe. Here live descendants of Holocaust survivors. Here, the memory of the war intersects with Yad Vashem, with family archives, with the stories of repatriates, with the Soviet veteran legacy, with the Ukrainian pain of today’s war, and with the Israeli security reality.
That is why it is important for Israeli society to distinguish respect for the fallen from participation in someone else’s state propaganda.
NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers this topic not as a dispute over a calendar date and not as an attack on family memory. It is a question of whether the memory of World War II and the Holocaust can be turned into a tool to justify new aggression.
The answer must be honest: it cannot.
The memory of Jews who fought against Nazism should not become part of the Kremlin’s myth of Russia’s right to a new war.
Latrun as an Israeli alternative to the Kremlin’s monopoly
Israel has its own, deeper, and more honest framework of memory about Jewish participation in World War II.
This is not only Yad Vashem, where the memory of the Holocaust is placed at the center of national and global consciousness. It is also the Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II named after Chaim Herzog in Latrun — מוזיאון הלוחם היהודי.
This museum is located in Latrun, on the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Its task is to tell an important and long-shadowed chapter of Jewish history: not only the Holocaust but also the heroism, participation, and contribution of Jewish soldiers in the defeat of Nazism. The museum itself indicates that it is dedicated to approximately 1.5 million Jews who were drafted or voluntarily joined the armies of the Allies, partisan detachments, and resistance movements, as well as the memory of approximately 250,000 Jewish soldiers who died during the war.
This is a fundamentally important emphasis.
Jews were not only victims of the Holocaust. They were soldiers, officers, scouts, partisans, underground fighters, participants in uprisings in ghettos and camps. They fought in the Red Army, in the armies of the USA, Britain, France, Poland, and other countries. They served in Jewish units, participated in resistance, liberated Europe, and many later became part of the history of the formation of Israel.
The museum’s exposition is built by fronts, armies, and forms of resistance. The official description speaks of a chronological account of the war from September 1939 to the surrender of Japan in September 1945, including the early years of the war, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the USA, partisans, underground fighters, ghetto and concentration camp fighters, as well as volunteers from Eretz Israel.
This is the strong Israeli response to the Kremlin’s monopoly.
Israel does not need to enter the Russian state ritual to remember Jewish front-line soldiers. Israel has Latrun, Yad Vashem, family stories, archives, names, documents, testimonies, and its own moral framework.
Latrun shows that the memory of World War II can be military in theme but not militaristic in spirit.
There, the Jewish soldier remains a person, a biography, and part of history, not a decoration for someone else’s state propaganda.
Ukrainian alternative: memory without the cult of war
In recent years, Ukraine increasingly offers another model of memory: at the center is not the state cult of victory, not the army as an object of worship, and not the slogan about repeating the war, but the human cost.
This is the memory of the victims of Nazism and Stalinism.
Memory of the shot Jews.
Memory of the deported peoples.
Memory of the dead Ukrainians.
Memory of destroyed cities.
Memory of modern wars — in Ukraine, Syria, Chechnya, Georgia, and other places where imperial logic once again destroyed people.
Such memory can be different: local ceremonies, educational projects, archival initiatives, museum exhibitions, family stories, moments of silence, reading names, stories about specific fates. It does not require the flags of the aggressor, portraits of dictators, and slogans “we can repeat.”
It requires something else: to call evil evil and not allow it to repeat.
May 9, 2026, as a test for the global West
May 9, 2026, becomes a test for Western societies.
The question is not whether to allow people to remember their fallen. Of course, memory cannot be forbidden. The question is different: will European, American, and other cities of “Western civilization” allow the memory of victory over one aggressor to be used as a cover for another aggressor — the one who is currently waging war against Ukraine?
Tolerance for events with pro-war slogans, Russian state symbols, and the Kremlin’s interpretation of history can actually mean providing public space for legitimizing aggression.
At the same time, respect for memory does not require such forms.
Ceremonies can be held without the flags of the aggressor. All the fallen can be remembered. Jewish, Ukrainian, Polish, English, American, French, Belarusian, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Georgian, Armenian, and many other fates can be spoken of. Names can be read. Exhibitions can be opened. The Holocaust, the front, partisans, deportations, Stalinist crimes, and the cost of war can be discussed.
But one cannot pretend that the slogans of modern Russian propaganda are simply a “cultural tradition.”
If a Kremlin memory ritual is allowed in a European city, there should also be a place for the voice of those whom the Russian war is killing today. Communities have the right to remind: Victory over Nazism in World War II does not belong to the Kremlin.
Freedom of assembly should not turn into a monopoly of one propagandist version of history.
What can be a worthy alternative
There is an alternative.
It is memory without portraits of dictators.
Memory without military slogans.
Memory without justifying new killings.
These are ceremonies without the flags of the aggressor state. This is the commemoration of all victims of Nazism and Stalinism. These are stories about specific families. This is a moment of silence instead of a militaristic march. These are educational programs, archival projects, museum exhibitions, publication of documents and testimonies.
This is the memory of Americans, Jews, French, Ukrainians, Poles, English, Germans, Belarusians, Russians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Armenians, Georgians, and all the peoples through whose homes the war passed.
This is a rejection of the formula “we can repeat.”
This is a return to the formula “never again.”
For Israel, such an alternative is especially natural. Yad Vashem and Latrun show two important dimensions of Jewish memory: Jews as victims of extermination and Jews as fighters against Nazism. In this framework, there is no need for the Kremlin ritual. There are names, biographies, documents, fates, pain, and responsibility.
Not every participant is a propagandist, but everyone must see the context
It is very important not to turn the article into an accusation of all people who have ever come out with a photograph of a relative.
Not every participant in the “Immortal Regiment” consciously supports the Kremlin. Many really go out of personal pain. Someone carries a photo of their father. Someone — a grandfather. Someone — a grandmother-nurse. Someone — a relative who went through the front and then could not sleep peacefully all their life.
This memory can be sincere.
But a sincere motive does not cancel the political result.
If a person comes to a space organized by the structures of a state leading a modern aggressive war, if slogans “we can repeat” are heard nearby, if symbols that have become part of Russian military propaganda are used, if the whole ritual then turns into a picture for Moscow, then it is necessary to honestly ask: was my personal memory used against the meaning of the memory itself?
This is a difficult question. But it is precisely such questions that distinguish a living conscience from automatic participation in someone else’s scenario.
Common memory — common responsibility
The memory of World War II belongs to many peoples. No one has a monopoly on Victory.
It belongs to the families of the fallen.
It belongs to Jews who survived the Holocaust and fought against Nazism.
It belongs to Ukrainians whose cities and villages were ravaged by war.
It belongs to Poles, Belarusians, Americans, English, Russians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Armenians, Georgians, peoples of the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Europe.
It belongs to those who were killed.
To those who survived.
To those who were silent.
To those who did not have time to tell.
To those whose names were preserved, and to those whose names were erased.
True respect for the fallen means not only remembering the past. It means doing everything possible to prevent such tragedies from happening again.
That is why today it is so important to distinguish: where is memory, and where is propaganda. Where is mourning, and where is mobilization. Where is the portrait of a deceased relative, and where is a political poster. Where is “never again” – “Never Again,” and where is “we can repeat.”
The question is not whether to remember the fallen.
They must be remembered.
The question is different: will we allow their faces to be turned into a decoration for a new war?
True memory does not require the slogan “we can repeat.” It requires something else: not to allow it to repeat – “Never Again.”