West rains on Putin’s parade
— It might have been hilarious if it had not been so sad to see Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrating Victory Day and the Soviet Union’s epochal triumph over Nazi Germany on the weekend surrounded by a rogues’ gallery of strongmen and despots from countries who had nothing to do with winning the war in Europe, rather than with leaders of the European or North American countries that were the Kremlin’s allies during the conflict.
By seizing parts of Ukraine last year and threatening Scandinavia and eastern Europe ever since, the pugnacious Russian leader has created such consternation across the Old World no democratically elected European leader wanted to be seen rubbing shoulders with him and his friends in Red Square. Russia’s isolation will likely increase after the over-thetop Nuremberg-style rally his armed forces staged in Moscow on Saturday.
The grand procession featured serried ranks of 16,000 goose-stepping troops, tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles galore, and a sky full of assault helicopters, fighter jets and bombers — in all, 160 warplanes. The first of many Victory Day parades in Moscow I attended was during Leonid Brezhnev’s Golden Age of Stagnation. Nothing I have seen over the years came close to approaching the muscular spectacle broadcast to the world by the BBC and the Russia Today network.
Such agitprop probably went down a treat with Putin’s most important guest, Xi Jinping, who looks as if he has already become the strongest Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping and could one day a mass as much power as Mao Zedong. China may have no connection to the Red Army’s triumph over Hitler’s Wehrmacht. But it briefly held centre stage, contributing to the festivities by sending troops from the People’s Liberation Army to join the parade.
The two leaders appeared to get along famously. Putin may have been grinning because he has finally found someone to dance with; Xi may have been grinning because China is about to have Russia for breakfast.
The pageant in Red Square would have seemed like mother’s milk to Egypt’s latest general/president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe, Cuba’s Raul Castro, his inept and weak Venezuelan sidekick, Nicolas Maduro, and such titans of international diplomacy as Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kyrgyzstan’s Almazbek Atambayev and Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon.
Putin’s party plans were too much for Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Belarusians played a major role in the Soviet defeat of Hitler’s armies so his attendance should have been a given, but since Putin’s Ukrainian adventures Lukashenko has been wondering what his neighbour’s end game is. He gave a tentative answer by staying home.
Germany’s Angela Merkel came the closest of any western leader to Putin’s Victory Day spectacular. The West’s key go-between with Russia flew in 24 hours later to honour the war dead of both countries at the Tomb of Unknown Soldier. It was clear from their mutual scowls and other body language this was no love-in. At the top of Merkel’s list of things to discuss was repeated ceasefire violations by Russia’s surrogates in eastern Ukraine.
She raised the issue as NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and the alliance’s top soldier, Gen. Philip Breedlove, warned Moscow was building up its forces again in southwestern Russia and inside Ukraine, and is supplying the troops gathering there with fresh tanks, artillery and ammunition.
The fear in western capitals has been that having finished with the Victory Day parties, Putin is about to direct his proxies in eastern Ukraine to seize the city of Mariupol. That would complete a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed last year.
Russia’s relations with Washington have become so poisonous the Kremlin would not reveal Monday whether Putin will meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry when he arrives Tuesday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to discuss Ukraine and Syria with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.
It is somewhat cheering talks between the West and Russia still happen from time to time. Merkel, who has been the West’s expert on Putin, has made no secret she believes he has deceived her again and again on Ukraine, but more Russians than ever seem to be in their leader’s thrall.
With any luck North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who absented himself from this year’s party at the last minute, will feel comfortable enough about his grip on power to join Putin’s next “gathering of the dictators.” At least for public consumption, Putin seemed unconcerned about the company he is now keeping.
“Everyone we wanted to see was here,” he told his countrymen during a nationally televised address after Saturday’s parade.