Russian President Vladimir Putin has cultivated the annual Victory Day parade commemorating the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany into a cornerstone of Russian patriotic ritual. Tanks and nuclear launchers roll across Red Square in a showcase of military prowess and righteous pride that the Kremlin has used to justify the country’s great-power posture toward the West.
This year, the parade is highlighted a moment of weakness for Putin.
Moscow is under a heavy security presence as Ukraine rattles Russia with long-range drone and missile strikes. Russian authorities have appeared exposed as they acknowledged that the beefed-up security was intended to protect Putin.
The parade today included none of the usual muscle-flexing missiles and armor. Personnel from Russian military academies and other service members made their way through Russia’s most famous square.
They included more than 1,000 soldiers and officers still active in the war in Ukraine and some from North Korea, who last year took part in pushing Ukrainian troops out of Russia’s Kursk region, according to a live broadcast from the event.
After about 45 minutes, the parade concluded with a flyover by Russian aerobatic teams and Su-25 ground-attack jets, coloring the sky in the white, blue and red of the Russian flag.
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This past week, Putin appealed unsuccessfully to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a parade-day ceasefire. On Friday night, in a decree tinged with mocking humor, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would “permit” Russia to hold the event by not attacking it.
The truncated parade, on what is the high point of the Russian calendar, added to a sense that Moscow and other major Russian cities could no longer be insulated from the war.
Drastic internet blackouts that the security services have portrayed as necessary precautions have angered Russians. After years of war-infused growth, the Russian economy is contracting, while the country’s budget deficit is reaching record highs.
On the front lines, the Russian army is barely moving, making the prospect of victory seem more distant than ever. More than four years into the war, Russia is still trying to seize the eastern Donbas region, which it says is a primary objective. In World War II, the Soviets helped defeat the Nazis in less time.
“Since the beginning of the year, a certain shift has occurred that we don’t yet fully realize,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “This shift consists of the fact that there is talk nonpublicly and, to a lesser extent, publicly that everyone is fed up.
“Everything that’s happening today from the point of view of security is a consequence of the fact that the government feels vulnerable,” Stanovaya added in a phone interview. “It is actually strange that he is holding the parade in such a situation.”
Yet a resolute Putin appeared Saturday morning on the makeshift stands concealing Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum. He was flanked by World War II veterans as well as service members currently fighting in Ukraine. Sitting next to him were also a handful of foreign leaders, including President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, a Russian ally; President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan; and President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan.
In his speech to open the parade, Putin tried to directly link the current war with the Soviet struggle against the Nazi invasion.
“The great feat of the generation of victors inspires the soldiers currently carrying out tasks in the ‘special military operation,’” Putin said, using the Kremlin’s term for the war in Ukraine. “They are standing against an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc.”
The live broadcast of the event featured reports from the front lines in Ukraine and from other parts of the military. The report specifically emphasized Russia’s efforts to improve its drone technology, a key element of the war in which Ukraine has often held the lead.
To cancel the event would have made Putin look even weaker. So before the parade, the Kremlin went to great lengths to ensure the event’s safety.
The blocking of the mobile internet — which Russia says Ukraine uses to guide drones — brought the digital functions of Moscow to a standstill. That stripped Muscovites of the modern conveniences that have long served as a source of local pride and added to an accruing sense of irritation.
Similar restrictions were put in place a year ago, when Putin hosted a roster of foreign leaders, including Xi Jinping of China, displaying Moscow as a center of a rising non-Western world order.
But at that time, many Russians were hopeful that President Donald Trump would soon mediate an end to the war, making them more willing to endure restrictions.
Today, the mood in the Russian capital is strikingly different, said Ilya Grashchenkov, a Moscow-based political analyst. “Putin is saying he doesn’t intend to end it until victory,” Grashchenkov said. “This kills hope.”
According to Grashchenkov, Russian elites are awaiting an exit plan by Putin from the crisis in Ukraine. “But so far there are only hints,” he said, “and they make the elites anxious.” One possibility, he added, is a transition to a perpetual war footing and the “transformation of Russia into something like Iran or North Korea.”
Over the past four years, Putin has survived multiple crises that led to predictions of an imminent collapse of his rule.
Early in the war, his army suffered painful defeats, including a forced withdrawal from Kyiv, a city that Putin has described as the cradle of Russian civilization. Months later, Russian troops fled a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region and later abandoned their only foothold on the right bank of the Dnieper River near Kherson.
In 2023, mercenaries led by Yevgeny Prigozhin staged an audacious and reckless mutiny, marching toward Moscow. Before the 2023 Victory Day parade, Ukrainian drones hit the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin. In both 2022 and 2023, Ukraine managed to severely damage the Crimean Bridge, a symbol of Russia’s control over the peninsula.
And yet Putin maintained a sense of stability at home while his army continued to crawl forward, holding the initiative since Ukraine’s failed 2023 counteroffensive and slowly but steadily capturing land in the Donbas.
On Thursday, Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide, asserted that Ukraine must order a withdrawal from the Donbas as a condition for a ceasefire and peace negotiations, a demand that Ukraine has firmly rejected.
Like Putin, the Russian economy for years also defied predictions of imminent collapse. It initially expanded after the invasion, fueled by a war-related cash influx that pushed standards of living to their highest levels in post-Soviet history.
That momentum hit a wall last year, and Russia now stands on the precipice of crisis because of high interest rates and Western sanctions that have limited revenues from energy exports.
“For the first time,” Grashchenkov said, “we’re facing a severe economic downturn.”
But Stanovaya cautioned that what appeared to be Putin’s current weakness and vulnerability might actually reflect his patience in weathering storms. At any point, she said, he could choose to escalate Russia’s war effort, perhaps by conducting another forced mobilization or seizing assets to fund the military, which would change the narrative of weakness.
“No one knows the limits where Putin might hit the table and say, ‘Enough,’” Stanovaya said. “He can endure for a very long time. And then he warns about something and does it, as it was with the war.”
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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