Pared-back Victory Day parades for Putin
Claims that Russians feared sabotage after military jets no-show blamed on the weather
Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow went ahead yesterday without a promised display of airpower in a muted display and speech from Vladimir Putin. The omission of the air display prompted speculation that Russia was worried about sabotage at the events where Mr Putin resisted the urge to declare all-out war with Ukraine or order mass mobilisaion. The Kremlin cancelled the air displays in Moscow and other cities citing “bad weather”.
RUSSIA’S Victory Day parade in Moscow went ahead without a promised display of airpower in a muted display and speech from Vladimir Putin.
The omission prompted speculation that Russia was worried about sabotage at the events, where Mr Putin resisted the urge to declare all-out war with Ukraine or order mass mobilisaion.
Aircraft rehearsing for yesterday’s event, which celebrates the end of the Second World War, had been seen flying in the “Z-shape”, which is also used to identify Russian armoured vehicles fighting in Ukraine.
But at the last minute, the Kremlin cancelled the planned display in Moscow and other cities because of “bad weather”. The government later cited heavy cloud cover and low-level turbulence, which would make precision formation flying difficult. The explanation caused widespread bafflement as conditions in Moscow were neither rainy nor particularly windy or overcast.
The cancellation of other flypasts in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Samara prompted speculation that Russia was worried about sabotage.
It added to a sense that Mr Putin’s much-vaunted extravaganza was something of a damp squib.
The Victory Day parade is held every year to celebrate the Soviet defeat of Hitler in the Second World War, a campaign Mr Putin claims he is now finishing off by mopping up “Nazis” in Ukraine.
Western governments claimed last month Mr Putin was pressuring his generals to win the war before May 9 so he could use it as a double victory parade.
When that plan failed, some Russian and foreign military experts warned he might use his traditional address to the troops to make a full-scale declaration of war against Kyiv, which would entail a mass mobilisation of Russian citizens.
In the event he did neither, instead comparing the current war with that against the Nazis and repeating his justifications for launching the invasion.
Addressing serried ranks of troops from all branches of the Russian armed forces, including some who had returned recently from Ukraine, he said Russia had no choice but to invade because the West was “preparing for the invasion of our land, including Crimea”.
“That is absolutely unacceptable to us,” he declared.
The “heroic” Russian soldiers he had despatched to Ukraine, he insisted, were fighting the same Nazi enemies their forefathers had battled at Stalingrad. The only difference was that these days, those “Nazis” were not controlled by Hitler but by Nato, which was also armed with atomic weapons.
“Nato was creating tensions at the borders. They did not want to listen to Russia, they had other plans,” he said.
“In Kyiv, they announced the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons,” he claimed – ignoring that he has been the one delivering nuclear-tipped threats.
In a tacit acknowledgement that the scale of Russia’s losses can no longer be convincingly hidden from the public, he signed a decree that would give support to the families of servicemen killed and wounded in the war.
“The death of every soldier and officer is painful for us,” he said. “The state will do everything to take care of these families.”
The tone of the speech was less belligerent than other addresses he has delivered in the the course of his invasion of Ukraine. He did not repeat threats to use nuclear weapons, despite the presence of ICBMS in the parade.
After the march past, Mr Putin laid flowers at the tomb of the unknown soldier next to the Kremlin wall and the stone monuments to 12 “Hero cities” of the Soviet Union.
He then joined an “Immortal Regiment” procession on Red Square – which sees people march with portraits of relatives who served in the war – holding a portrait that the Kremlin said was of his father, a front-line soldier.
The event was created in 2012 as an independent alternative to the militarised parade on Red Square but quickly adopted as a part of the official programme when it proved popular.
The founders of the event, three local television journalists from Tomsk, declared they would not march this year because “unfortunately we are witnessing phenomena and events that change the original meaning”.
It was one of many incidents to marr what was meant to be a day of triumph,
In the run-up before live coverage started, a computer hack of Russian broadcasters led to millions of Russians receiving anti-war messages on their screens. “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of their children is on your hands,” one read. “TV and the authorities lie. No to war.”
With much of the army still tied down in Ukraine, the parade itself was considerably scaled back. Oliver Alexander, a Danish military analyst, said parade plans published by the Kremlin showed there were 131 vehicles this year, compared with 234 in 2020 and 197 in 2021.
“A lot of the stuff missing is actually in Ukraine, including various multiple launch rocket systems and armoured vehicles, which have been used extensively and suffered heavy losses,” he said.
Nuclear missile launch vehicles and multiple rocket launch systems did appear, alongside some next-generation weapons that the Kremlin has yet to make fully operational.
Smaller events were held in 28 other Russian cities, involving more than 60,000 participants in all.
Mr Putin would likely have held the parade in Kyiv if his invasion had gone to plan. In 2014 he attended a parade in Sevastopol to celebrate the annexation of Crimea two months earlier. Instead, even Ukraine’s pro-russian breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk had to cancel this year for security reasons.
Also cancelled was a planned parade in the Russian-captured city of Mariupol – most likely because it is far too bomb-damaged to be fit for TV screens.
Events were held in the occupied Ukrainian cities of Kherson and Melitopolr. Residents said he parades were staged with participants bused in from elsewhere.
A student from Kherson told The Daily Telegraph Russian soldiers “brought in people from Crimea to shoot a story for the Russian media”.
Earlier in the day, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, released a speech arguing that his troops were the true heirs to the Red Army that defeated Hitler and that they would liberate Mariupol, Kherson and Melitopol just as their grandfathers freed those cities from the Nazis.