Josif Vissarionovich and Vladimir Vladimirovich

In February 1945, the Allied leaders — Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill — gathered in the seaside resort of Yalta in Crimea, just a missile’s throw from today’s devastated and martyrized Mariupol.

The central item on the conference agenda was the demilitarization and denazification of Germany.

Their goal — to eliminate Nazi parties, institutions, organizations, laws, and cultural influence from German public life — rested on the determination that top political and military leaders of the Third Reich should be held accountable before an international tribunal.

Karma is a bitch. So is history, sometimes.

Who would have thought that Putin’s bloody march toward the “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine, which began eight years ago with the occupation of Crimea, could end in a fashion prepared on that very same Crimea seventy-seven years ago by his infamous predecessor and increasingly apparent role model — Josif Vissarionovich Stalin.

Just a few years ago, comparisons between Putin and Stalin might have seemed superficial — a kind of Cyrillic “reductio ad Hitlerum.”

Not anymore.

Vladimir Vladimirovich has done everything in his power to make such comparisons — not just in Cyrillic but also in Gothic script — entirely relevant.

In a 2017 interview with his Hollywood admirer Oliver Stone, Putin warned that "excessive demonization of Stalin is an attack on the Soviet Union and Russia." Though he added, of course, that the horrors of Stalinism should not be forgotten.

At the time, The Washington Post assessed that these statements revealed how Putin sees himself as a softer, Stalin-lite version of his authoritarian predecessor — inheriting all his virtues, but none of his sins. Patriotism and the cult of a strong leader — without the paranoia.

Well, there’s little softness left now. Putin is catching up with his idol even in sins, and at full speed.

The Russian public has followed suit. According to data from the independent Levada Center, the percentage of Russians who felt “respect” for Stalin rose from 29% in 2018 to 41% in 2019.

Stalin's approval rating regarding his role in Russian history also grew, reaching 70%. In the same poll, 46% agreed that the "successes of the Soviet era justify the human losses of Stalinism."

These figures from three years ago help explain today’s high public support for Putin’s “special military operation.” That support is not merely the result of censorship or a lack of information — it's also the result of years of propaganda, pressure, and disinformation.

Yes, many Russians oppose the war — and they deserve recognition, especially for doing so under risk of great personal harm.

But it’s also true that this is not just Putin’s war. A significant majority of the Russian public supports the aggression — not just because they’re unaware of what's truly happening (aside from Russian casualty numbers), but because they agree with the goals Putin outlined in his sinister speech the morning of the invasion:

“Demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine as euphemisms for punishing and annihilating a nation that, according to the fanatic in the Kremlin, has no right to exist — because “historically,” it never existed in the first place.

Here lies another parallel between Putin and Stalin.

What we’re witnessing in recent weeks (and really, years) is not the Kremlin’s first attempt to subjugate and punish Ukrainians.

In the early 1930s, Stalin's “special agricultural operation” caused the death of millions, mostly Ukrainians. They died of hunger — just like survivors in Mariupol are dying of hunger today.

Historians still debate whether Holodomor was a crime against humanity or a genocide. But one fact is clear: it was a deliberate act by Stalin’s regime to starve into submission those Ukrainians deemed not sufficiently loyal to the Soviet state.

Putin’s psychopathological evolution from Stalin-lite to full-blooded Stalin was fully revealed in his March 16 speech, in which he declared that the “Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and simply spit them out like a fly accidentally swallowed.”

He expressed his conviction that “this natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion, and readiness to respond to any challenge.”

End quote. End illusions.

How fragile Russia’s moral authority to "denazify" anyone truly is, was neatly illustrated by a cartoon published recently by the Russian embassy in Paris.

In classic antisemitic style, worthy of a Der Stürmer cover, the U.S. and the EU were depicted as two hooked-nosed men injecting the weakened corpse of Europe with Russophobia, neo-Nazism, sanctions, and — believe it or not — COVID-19.

Then again, the Russian ambassador isn’t the only one in Europe who apparently missed the memo about what hooked-nose caricatures and similar antisemitic iconography represent.

So it's time we returned to Yalta.

When Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill proposed creating an international criminal court to demilitarize and denazify Hitler’s Germany, they faced a legal dilemma.

International law at the time allowed for prosecution of crimes against peace and war crimes but had no clear framework for trying political and military leaders for crimes against civilians.

Churchill supposedly suggested a pragmatic solution: line up Nazi leaders and shoot them.

Stalin didn’t object but was open to other options.

Roosevelt insisted on due process — which was absolutely right.

Where extrajudicial measures were used, we still suffer the consequences.

The legal basis for the Nuremberg Trials came from the London Charter of August 1945, which added a new category to international law: crimes against humanity. It introduced the criminal liability of political and military leaders for actions committed against civilians.

Article 6 of the London Charter — the foundation for the Nuremberg Trials — included among crimes against humanity:

“Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war…”

If anyone wants to understand how that grim legal language looks in practice, they should watch what the Russian army and its mercenaries are doing in Mariupol.

If Putin and his military and political accomplices are not brought before an international tribunal to answer for the horrors committed in Ukraine, it will certainly not be for lack of evidence.

But if they are held accountable, then perhaps — though not in the way Putin intended — his stated goal will be fulfilled.

If not “denazification,” then at least:

Destalinization. Of Russia.