Putin stops short of declaring war
PRESIDENT INVOKES RUSSIA'S GLORY IN 1945 IN MUTED VICTORY DAY CELEBRATION
It could have been a moment of triumph. If Vladimir Putin's February invasion of Ukraine had gone as planned, the Russian president would have been reviewing Monday's Victory Day parade on Kyiv's Independence Square — claiming a triumph as glorious, in his view, as 1945 itself.
Instead, his troops were marching through Red Square in Moscow with a fraction of the hardware they usually display and none of the aircraft — and the comparisons he drew were not between two victories, but two bloody but righteous struggles that required the country to pull together.
Putin was always going to compare his current war in Ukraine with the Second World War in a bid to rally the country and the army to his invasion.
But he did not, as some predicted, claim “mission accomplished.” That would have been a distortion too far when even in Mariupol, which he previously claimed to be “liberated” the fight is not over.
Nor did he use it to formally declare war or announce mass mobilization.
That option is still on the table: it is being publicly debated on federal television, so the public will be primed if the step is taken.
It is possible that the decision has not yet been taken — there are great political and economic risks involved.
Possibly it will emerge later, in the form of a decree or announcement in the Duma that would not be quite so directly associated with Putin himself.
Whatever the reason, Putin clearly decided his annual Red Square address, traditionally more of a sermon than a policy speech, was not the moment to shock the nation.
So he delivered an orthodox Victory Day speech: praising the generation of Soviet men and women who crushed the Nazis, urging modern Russians to try to live up to their memory, and invoking the victory as an almost mystical bond holding the nation together.
But everyone knew this year was about another war, and he quickly came to the point.
Right from the start, he invoked the memory of Soviet soldiers who fought the Nazis “at Kyiv Minsk, Sevastopol and Kharkiv — just as today you are fighting for our people in Donbas, for the safety of our mother Russia.”
For the watching public, he restated his justifications for the invasion.
Russia, he said, had always stood for peace and the prevention of a repetition of the horrors of the Second World War.
In the past year, it had proposed a dialogue on the indivisibility of security. But the West had other ideas.
It armed Ukraine, which was preparing it for “neo-nazi” attack on the Donbas. Kyiv might even have developed a nuclear bomb, creating an “absolutely unacceptable threat to our security, right on our borders.”
“The threat was growing day by day. It was the correct, timely, and absolutely only possible decision,” he said of his decision to invade.
In fact, if he hadn't started this war, there could have been an even bigger one, he claimed.
He went on to praise the soldiers parading in front of him, many, he said, who had come straight back from operations in Donbas — he would not say “Ukraine,” because in his narrative the war is confined to that eastern region.
In an important acknowledgment of the human costs, he said he had signed a decree
IF HE HADN'T STARTED THIS WAR, THERE COULD HAVE BEEN AN EVEN BIGGER ONE, HE CLAIMED.
to support the families of those killed and wounded, and made a point of thanking the doctors and nurses dealing with casualties.
That is significant. To deny the obvious mounting losses, like trying to claim a victory that everyone knows has not been reached, would have been a deception too far.
In the end, he told his soldiers — and the country — they were fighting a just, noble war in the same tradition as their grandfathers.
The West, though, had betrayed the memory of the British, American and other Allied troops who contributed to victory in 1945.
There was little new. Putin has always exploited the Second World War for political purposes. He has long equated opposing his vision of a great Russia with Nazism. And he has articulated all the justifications for his invasion of Ukraine many, many times before.
It was utterly empty of new ideas. But that was not the point. Victory Day in Putin's Russia is a ritual. An incantation of semi-religious ideas that harnesses his own legitimacy to the heroism of the generation who freed Europe from the horror unleashed by a nationalist dictator hellbent on imperial expansion.
With his own war of aggression running into a bloody quagmire, he needs that legitimacy more than ever. So he stuck closely to the script. “We will always compare ourselves to that generation,” he ended. “For our victory. Hurrah.”