Washington Again Blocks U.S. Veterans from Attending Moscow Victory Day Parade
May 9, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Russia’s Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov charged yesterday that the Biden Administration used threats to prevent U.S. World War II veterans from attending the parade in Moscow.
“For a second straight year, efforts by the U.S. administration have disrupted a trip of U.S. participants in the Second World War to the Victory Day parade. War veterans came under unprecedented pressure. They were even threatened with the revocation of their passports, so they couldn’t fly to Russia and take part in the celebration of the 78th anniversary of the Great Victory,”
he said in a statement.
One U.S. war veteran, 97-year-old Col. Frank Cohn (ret.), told Sputnik in an interview from the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., that the United States and Russia have to remember that they were allies during World War II and can restore their historic partnership again.
“While it is probably a false hope, I am an optimist, and I hang onto the time when things looked bright for all of us—back in May 1945. Yes, there was terrible devastation all around us, but the spirit was correct. We were going to go forward and repair the world, we were allies, we were friends,”
Cohn said.
Cohn said that it is his obligation to remind people about those times when the United States and Russia, along with the United Kingdom and France, were on the same side and fought Nazism.
“Now, I go and participate to bring back that moment. It is not an easy thing to do at my age, but I must do it as long as I can, because someone young might catch that simmering glow of a short-lived peaceful world surrounded with friendship, and in remembrance, perhaps years far in the future, say with the political power that he or she might have attained: ‘We can do this again!’ ”
Sputnik reveals that on April 25, 1945, Cohn was one of the U.S. soldiers who was part of the historic meeting with their Soviet allies at the Elbe River at Torgau, Germany.
