Russia, Belarus mark day in contrasting events

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin marked Victory Day, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, in a ceremony short of its usual military parade and pomp by the coronavirus pandemic.

In neighboring Belarus, however, the ceremonies went ahead in full, with tens of thousands of people in the sort of proximity that has been almost unseen in the world for months.

Putin on Saturday laid flowers at the tomb of the unknown soldier just outside the Kremlin walls and gave a short address honoring the valor and suffering of the Soviet army during the war.

Victory Day is Russia’s most important secular holiday and this year’s observance had been expected to be especially large because it is the 75th anniversary, but the Red Square military parade and a mass procession called The Immortal Regiment were postponed as part of measures to stifle the spread of the virus.

The only vestige of the conventional show of military might was a flyover of central Moscow by 75 warplanes and helicopters.

The ceremony was the first public appearance in about a month for Putin, who has worked remotely as the virus took hold.

In his speech, he did not mention the virus — Russia has nearly 200,000 confirmed cases — or how its spread had blocked the observances that were to be a prestige project for him.

But he promised that full commemorations would take place.

“We will, as usual, widely and solemnly mark the anniversary date, do it with dignity, as our duty to those who have suffered, achieved and accomplished the victory tells us,” he said. “There will be our main parade on Red Square, and the national march of the Immortal Regiment — the march of our grateful memory and inextricable, vital, living communication between generations.”

The sharply reduced observances this year left a hole in Russia’s civic and emotional calendar. The war, in which the Soviet Union lost an estimated 26 million people including 8.5 million soldiers, has become a fundamental piece of Russian national identity.

Beyond the stern formalities of the Red Square military parade and smaller parades in other cities, Russians in recent years have turned out in huge numbers for the Immortal Regiment processions, when civilians crowd the streets displaying photographs of relatives who died in the war or endured it. Russian officials routinely bristle at criticism of the Red Army’s actions in the war, denouncing the comments as attempts to “rewrite history.”

In the capitals of Latvia and Estonia, both former Soviet republics with large ethnic Russian populations, small groups were seen arriving throughout the day to lay flowers on Soviet war memorials.