German Military Emissaries attending the May Day March, 1941, six weeks before Operation Barbarossa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfSrBMuXI8
“It is also a key way for President Putin to legitimise himself and his expansionist foreign policy as a successor to the Soviet empire.”
This is a BBC article. It is crap agitprop for the globalist EU. Yes this is a blind spot for Russians who don’t want to face the full evil of the USSR (not easy to live with for many younger Russians). But - if Russia wanted to ‘expand’ they could do so tomorrow and no one could reasonably stop them.