Is Putin's Victory Parade meant to give the Illusion of Victory after a Five Year War with a Sovereign Country?

Compare ~ 2022 Vladimir Putin’s Victory Parade ~ Four years ago, Putin stood grandly at a podium, surveying a legion of armored military vehicles. Weeks earlier, he’d invaded neighboring Ukraine, from then on sparking a conflict that has dragged on. During a defiant speech in 2022, Putin launched an attack on NATO, Ukraine and a host of Western countries.

Surrounded by military hardware, he insisted that Russia was “fighting for the motherland, for her future, and so that nobody would forget the lessons of World War II”.

Contrast ~ This year’s parade came together awkwardly. The Kremlin announced that due to the threat of Ukrainian drone & missile strikes, the event would proceed in a scaled back format without any tanks or military equipment. Instead, the pageantry was limited to columns of troops marching across Moscow’s central square. The dramatic downgrade represented a tacit admission (by Putin) that he can no longer ensure security in his own capital.

Five years ago, the entire notion of The Russian President seeking Trump’s intervention to protect Moscow from Ukrainian attack would have appeared absurd. This humiliating turn of events will not have passed unnoticed inside Russia, where rumblings of dissent are already becoming more audible amid a grinding war, deteriorating economic outlook, and escalating government restrictions on internet access. Putin’s obvious inability to protect his own showpiece parade will now underscore perceptions that the regime is rapidly losing control of the narrative and has become trapped in a war it cannot win, and finding difficult to extricate itself, unscathed.


For the first time in nearly two decades, Putin’s Victory Parade celebration went ahead without a heavy show of military force. The event was scaled back amid new fears of long-range Ukrainian drone strikes that have been hitting deep inside Russia.


https://www.thebulwark.com/p/putin-pathetic-parade-russia-victory-day-2026-ukraine-war