World shouldn’t worry about befriending Russia — it should focus on punishing it, says dissident

This was reported by Espreso correspondent Natalia Starepravo.

According to Marynovych, the failure to properly judge and punish the crimes of Stalin’s regime after the defeat of Nazism in the last century paved the way for Russia’s current aggression against Ukraine.

He emphasized that as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazism, it should also remember the 80 years of “illusory hope that the crimes committed by the communist regime could be forgotten and life could return to normal.”

“It’s impossible because the crimes of communism, which were forgiven in 1945 for the sake of security interests, were like seeds left in the ground. And today, we have Putin’s regime, once again dragging the world into war — just as Hitler and the Soviet Union did back then,” the human rights activist explained.

He noted that while his view on the need to punish the aggressor is becoming more widely accepted, the world is once again leaning toward seeking peace through compromise.

“We can easily talk about what happened 80 years ago. And I can see that the world again wants to achieve peace through compromise. That is, no one is seriously talking yet about punishing the aggressor, about restitution for Ukraine, or about depoliticizing the population, like how denazification was carried out after World War II. You see, the lesson still hasn’t been learned, and the same tasks remain in front of us,” Marynovych concluded.

• A new investigation highlights how Russia has systematically used historical manipulation—especially references to Nazism—to legitimize its war in Ukraine and shape public opinion against the West.