After a rocket hit a residential building in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to celebrate a victory from the Second World War this Thursday.

As Ukraine mourns the dead of rocket terror in Kramatorsk, Putin commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Red Army's victory in the Battle of Stalingrad against the Wehrmacht.

To do this, the 70-year-old travels to the city of Volgograd, which is currently called Stalingrad again for a short time according to the place-name signs because of the anniversary.

In Ukraine, however, the salvage work continued after the rocket hit Kramatorsk.

By Thursday morning, three bodies had been recovered from the rubble.

The number of injured rose to 21. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of an increase in attacks on this anniversary.

Unfazed by the violence and destruction caused by his war against Ukraine, Putin is likely to claim once again that he sees his attack on the neighboring country almost a year ago as a continuation of the fight against Nazism.

Only in January did he again accuse the leadership in Kyiv of worshiping the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera (1909-1959), who helped Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler at the time, as a hero today.

"Therefore, we have every reason to call the current Ukrainian rulers neo-Nazi," Putin said at a meeting with veterans in St. Petersburg.

Critics accuse Putin of misusing the commemoration of the Soviet Union's victory over Hitler's Germany in World War II, which is sacred to many Russians, for his propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine.

According to the Kremlin, Putin is meeting with representatives of patriotic and youth organizations on the Volga.

A bust of Stalin was also unveiled in Volgograd to commemorate the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) who led the country to victory.

Turning point in World War II

The Battle of Stalingrad with hundreds of thousands of dead within 200 days is considered one of the heaviest and most decisive defeats of the German Wehrmacht and thus a turning point in the Second World War.

The city was almost completely destroyed in the bitter fighting.

On November 19, 1942, the Red Army counterattacked, during which the 6th Army of the German Wehrmacht was surrounded.

On February 2, 1943, the last German units were taken prisoner of war.

The city has been called Volgograd since 1961.

In the Battle of Stalingrad, many Ukrainians fought in the Red Army alongside Russian soldiers against Hitler's troops.

Today the two ex-Soviet republics are fighting each other.

After the rocket hit a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again urged the West to help against the Russian attacks.

“The only way to stop Russian terrorism is to defeat it.

through tanks.

fighter jets.

Long-range missiles,” he wrote on Twitter.