Yep. I imagine most nations on the Eastern Front see D-Day as “A group of Allies poked head through backyard doggy door and said, “Oi!” Day.”

If Hitler had mustered up just enough wisdom to realize that an invasion of the USSR would be disastrous and managed to contain his hatred of communism just enough to restrain himself from operation Barbarossa, he could likely have held most of Europe and a DDay type landing would have been unlikely to succeed. Nothing short of a nuclear bombardment of Europe would have dislodged them. One of the weirdest darkest historical hypotheticals. It’s amazing how much of history hinges on the personal flaws of specific leaders.

There’s also the fact that in some ways, it was about making sure the Russians didn’t take all of Europe. Italy was in Allied control by then, but the ways through the alps to the rest of Europe are choke points that are easily defended, and have known by military strategists since at least Roman times. If the Russians take Berlin and end Hitler, and France is still otherwise under German control, what then? Better go liberate France and as much of Germany as possible to make sure the Russians don’t get it.

I personally think the role of the soviet union in WW2 is underappreciated, too! But thats my point: soviet union, not Russia! The majority of victims in WW2 where Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians, Poles, Belarusians and Lithuanians – the same countries now fighting Russia (except for Belarusia)!

Russia never was the good guy and Putin deserves nothing of the praise for the soviet unions role in WW2. Maybe invite the Poles, Ukrainians or Baltics insteac!

In theory, that’s up to the French state.

In practice, Putin wouldn’t go to a state that wouldn’t agree to extend diplomatic immunity to him.

And France isn’t going to grant diplomatic immunity and violate it.

So there isn’t really a scenario where he’s going to go and then France is going to arrest him. Either France doesn’t grant diplomatic immunity and he doesn’t enter France, or France does grant diplomatic immunity and he passes through without issue.

He most probably would now. During the first stage of the invasion, Macron was amenable to Putin and agreed to meet in person. He’s totally flipped 180 now though, knowing he got played like a damn fool for trusting him.

A more salient point is that Russia was one of the fucking instigators of WW2 and only ended on the winning side through political expedience.

Technically, there were a lot of Russian and Mongolian conscripts volunteers serving in the Osttruppen on the German side.

Ehhhh…

So, Stalin had been pushing for it, in that a second front would reduce pressure on the Soviet Union. It’d also create more difficulties for the Axis; they’d have to have some of their forces a fair distance away, hard to reinforce a spot that runs into trouble. So he politically supported it.

The fighting on the Eastern Front wasn’t part of the D-Day landings as such, but in turn, it pulled Axis forces away from an area. The really risky part of an amphibious operation is before there’s an established beachhead – then the forces are very vulnerable. Limited retreat isn’t possible. An overall retreat is very difficult, rapid reinforcement isn’t easy. All of the supply line may be under fire. Much of the supply is on ships, which are vulnerable. A big part of making D-Day work was keeping major Axis counterattacks away until the beachhead had been enlarged enough that the landing areas weren’t at direct risk, and things like the paratrooper drops, subterfuge aimed at creating confusion, severing communications, and all that are all aimed at buying enough of a window to do that. Pressure elsewhere will help with that.

By the time that D-Day occurred, a lot of fighting had occurred on the Eastern Front. Had that not occurred, there would have been much larger Axis forces available to counterattack in Normandy.

D-Day wasn’t a Soviet operation, no. But Soviet actions did make it much more viable than would have otherwise been the case.

EDIT: Also, while the great bulk of Lend-Lease was towards the Soviet Union, there was also some amount of limited “reverse Lend-Lease”, where certain materials that were in short supply with the western Allies but readily-available in the Soviet Union were shipped back. That wasn’t specific to the D-Day landings, but they’ll have generally aided operations in the west.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Reverse_Lend-lease

Reverse Lend-Lease

Reverse Lend-Lease was the supply of equipment and services to the United States. Nearly $8 billion (equivalent to $124 billion today) worth of war material was provided to U.S. forces by its allies, 90% of this sum coming from the British Empire. Reciprocal contributions included the Austin K2/Y military ambulance, British aviation spark plugs used in B-17 Flying Fortresses, Canadian-made Fairmile launches used in anti-submarine warfare, Mosquito photo-reconnaissance aircraft, and Indian petroleum products. Australia and New Zealand supplied the bulk of foodstuffs to United States forces in the South Pacific.

Though diminutive in comparison, the Soviet Union supplied the United States with chrome and manganese ore, platinum, gold and wood.[citation needed]

I dunno, France actually might arrest him right now.

Or would it go like Stalin when those who were present when he collapsed could have saved him but decided instead to do nothing?

I’d think that those who have enough power in Russia to launch a rescue war might decide instead they are better off without him. But it does depend on what kind of dead man switches he has set.