Recently, a news portal reported that our monarch was invited to attend Russia's 81st V-Day anniversary. If my knowledge of history does not fail me, Russia helped end the Second World War. It defended itself against the tyranny of the German Army, first in Operation Barbarossa and later in the Battle of Stalingrad. It was also the Russians who delivered the coup de grâce to Hitler as they approached the Führerbunker in Berlin, which decimated the Western Front.