Andrei Kozyrev’s admirable opinion piece (“Putin’s military parade will be a squalid spectacle”, Opinion, May 7) points out the similarities “between Russian aggression today and Hitler’s war of conquest in Europe after 1939”.

But surely the similarities lie even closer to home: Soviet aggression in 1939, when it invaded Poland from the east, exterminating or exiling thousands of Polish intelligentsia, officers and ordinary citizens in its way. “The Great Patriotic War” commemorated on May 9 started in 1941 and Russians always seem reluctant to acknowledge what Stalin was up to in the two previous years — perhaps a “special military operation”.

Celina Fox
Great Chishill, Cambridgeshire, UK