Putin hails conquests in Red Square spectacle
Russian leader signals Ukraine war will continue to dominate his rule
HBERLIN is most beloved crooner sang a nationalistic ballad with an appeal to Russians: “The Motherland is calling. Don’t let her down.”
His favorite band belted out a moody song about wartime sacrifice.
And then he took the stage Monday — under a banner celebrating the 10th anniversary of Crimea’s seizure from Ukraine — to remind thousands of Russians gathered in Red Square his fight to add territory to Russia wasn’t over.
President Vladimir Putin, a day after declaring victory in a performative election, signaled the war against Ukraine would continue to dominate his rule and called for unity in bringing the people of eastern Ukraine “back to their home family.”
“We will move on together, hand in hand,” Putin told the crowd, boasting of a restored railroad line he said would soon connect to Crimea through territory taken from Ukraine. “And this is precisely what really makes us stronger: not words, but deeds.”
The display of nationalistic fervor capped a three-day election whose foregone conclusion prompted comparisons of Putin’s Russia to other authoritarian dictatorships. On Sunday night, state news swiftly declared he had won more than 87% of the vote.
Underscoring the artificial nature of the election, Putin brought the three puppet competitors the Kremlin had picked to run against him onto the stage on Red Square and offered each a turn at the microphone, saying they all took “different approaches” but had “one Motherland.”
The crowd broke into the Russian national anthem before men in military uniforms with pro-war “Z” patches and medals took the stage and joined a singer in a war ballad. “Give him the strength to win,” went the chorus.
Putin, 71, showed little of the emotion he at times has displayed at similar events, such as when he appeared to tear up during a victory speech after the 2012 election. He mouthed the words to the national anthem with relatively little enthusiasm and quickly left the event.
The celebration made clear the war against Ukraine had come to be the organizing principle of Putin’s rule, and it was held as Russians braced for what might come next in a country still fighting on the battlefield and led by a newly emboldened leader. The massive crowd that gathered in Red Square was made up in part of government workers, students and others who were given tickets and in some cases asked to attend, a common practice for pro-Kremlin rallies in Russia.
A 59-year-old social worker, who gave her name as Nadya and arrived waving a giant Russian flag and wearing a folk headdress known as a kokoshnik, said she did not want war, but the West needed to stop antagonizing Russia. Russia, she said, needs to be respected, and ending the hostilities is not up to Putin.
“It doesn’t depend on us,” she said. “It’s the West. England, America — they want to divide us up and make us into little colonies.”
For many Russians, the big worry now is of another military draft, as Putin doubles down on his invasion.
A 29-year-old government analyst at the celebration, who gave his name as Maksim, said he had voted for Putin. But he expressed sympathy for the people of Ukraine as well as for Russian soldiers fighting on the front, and he acknowledged he feared another draft.
There are other jitters as well, from the expectation of higher taxes to the possibility of greater repression. Putin could reshuffle his Cabinet, a typical postelection procedure some analysts believe he could use to elevate the most hawkish members of the ruling elite.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, predicted Putin would seek to renew the personnel in his “power vertical,” the term for the political system he has honed that has turned post-Soviet Russia into an autocracy. She said he could seek to promote young, pro-war bureaucrats over the older generation of officials — mostly men born in the 1950s — who now dominate the upper echelons of his system.
“In times of war, the ‘young hawks’ are, potentially, increasingly in demand,” she wrote.