Vancouver Sun

Putin to appear at `victory' celebratio­n

`Doomsday' plane to join parade fly-past

- GUY FAULCONBRI­DGE

• Russian President Vladimir Putin will send a “doomsday” warning to the West when he leads celebratio­ns on Monday marking the 77th anniversar­y of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany, brandishin­g Russia's vast firepower while its forces fight on in Ukraine.

Defiant in the face of deep Western isolation since he ordered the invasion of its neighbour, Putin will speak on Red Square before a parade of troops, tanks, rockets and interconti­nental ballistic missiles.

A fly-past over St. Basil's Cathedral will include supersonic fighters, Tu-160 strategic bombers and, for the first time since 2010, the Il-80 “Doomsday” command plane, which would carry Russia's top brass in the event of a nuclear war, the Defence Ministry said.

In that scenario, the Il-80 is designed to become the roaming command centre for the Russian president. It is packed with technology but specific details are Russian state secrets.

The 69-year-old Kremlin leader has repeatedly likened the war in Ukraine to the challenge the Soviet Union faced when Adolf Hitler's Nazis invaded Russia in 1941.

“The attempt to appease the aggressor on the eve of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be a mistake that cost our people dearly,” Putin said on Feb. 24 when he announced what he called a special military operation in Ukraine.

“We will not make such a mistake a second time, we have no right.”

The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in the Second World War, more than any other country, and Putin has railed in recent years at what Moscow sees as attempts in the West to revise the history of the war to belittle the Soviet victory.

Beside the 1812 defeat of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, the defeat of Nazi Germany is the Russians' most revered military triumph, though both catastroph­ic invasions from the west left Russia deeply sensitive about its borders.

The war in Ukraine will cast a long shadow over this Victory Day.

Russia's invasion has killed thousands of people and displaced nearly 10 million. It has also left Russia in the grip of tough Western sanctions, and has raised fears of a wider confrontat­ion between Russia and the United States — by far the world's biggest nuclear powers.

Although 11,000 troops marching across Red Square along with what the Defence Ministry has said will be 131 pieces of military hardware will present a grand spectacle, the Ukraine conflict has exposed weaknesses in Russia's armed forces despite Putin's attempt in his two decades in power to halt the post-soviet decline.

The Kremlin has been denied a quick victory and the Russian economy — squeezed hard by sanctions — is facing the worst contractio­n since the years following the fall of the Soviet Union.

Less than two decades ago, U.S. President George W. Bush joined Putin for the May 9 celebratio­ns in Moscow. This year no Western leader was invited, the Kremlin said.

The U.S. and its allies have ramped up supplies of weapons to Ukraine and Putin has faced calls from some in the Russian military to unleash greater firepower on Ukraine, two sources close to the armed forces told Reuters. Moscow has told Western nations that their arms supplies are legitimate targets.

Ahead of May 9, speculatio­n swirled across Moscow and Western capitals that Putin was preparing some sort of special announceme­nt on Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described those suggestion­s as “nonsense.”

 ?? ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO / REUTERS ?? Service members of pro-russian forces stand guard as civilians evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol arrive at a temporary accommodat­ion centre in the village of Bezimenne, Ukraine, on Friday.
ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO / REUTERS Service members of pro-russian forces stand guard as civilians evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol arrive at a temporary accommodat­ion centre in the village of Bezimenne, Ukraine, on Friday.

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