Explanation
The losses of Germany on the eastern front are widely believed to be the most significant factor in defeating Nazi Germany and the USSR won the battle of Berlin, the final battle before the German capitulation. Thus Europe widely believed (for a good reason) that the USSR was the main contributor in defeating Germany. With the cold war the perception of the USSR became a lot worse in western countries like France and with increasing anti-USSR sentiment the view flipped to viewing the USA as the deciding factor. The USSR (and the Russian Federation today, even if its government is very anti USSR) viewed itself as the most important force in defeating Germany, especially because the USSR had the biggest amount of deaths. It is worth noting that the USSR was at least commercially allied with Nazi Germany until June 22, 1941 and there was an agreement between the nations on which parts of Europe each could invade and which where reserved for the other.
“Kif, show them the medal I won”
I don’t think dying a lot necessarily means means doing much, it just means that you are incompetent and have a careless disregard for life.
Except the majority of these were civilian casualties, not military. So it means the Axis was methodically murdering people.
“Russia is indifferent to deaths” is a propaganda narrative, but WWII data doesn’t match it.
Here’s a copy paste of my answer above to someone with a similar argument for your perusal:
I guess it really depends on what the metric you want to gauge by is, ‘contribution’ is very vague. Manpower, resources, effect, something else?
It could also be that the survey question was later phrased more as who contributed the most in France during WW2, which would not include the Soviets much at all.