Contestations between the West and Russia are not simply on the different experiences of their common struggle against fascism and militarism but on the meaning and perceived consequences of 1945. For the US, which played a relatively marginal role in destroying the Third Reich, the event is more of a coming of age story. An America transcending its insular instincts to assume world leadership by profiting from the self-destruction of the old order. For Russia, who destroyed over 90 percent of Germany's forces at the cost of 27 million lives, the war is central to understanding and resolving the European security problem. The solution, which also found resonance among Western statesmen at that time, was the idea of a legitimate sphere of influence — a buffer — against potential geopolitical ambitions of the dominant power in Europe. The breakdown of this system of security in 1991 and its displacement with cycles of NATO expansion deeper and deeper into the 1945 buffer zone heightened Russian insecurity and provoked a pushback manifesting in conflicts on the Russian periphery since 2008. Although Russian power is now more than adequate to defend its core interests, Russia's perceptions of its contemporary challenges also includes resisting Western attempts to appropriate or negate the history of 1945. The Ukrainian conflict impelled Moscow, to once "again demonstrate to the world Russia's categorical rejection of Fascism", in the words of its Defense Minister last May.