Putin celebrates his most lackluster military parade with Zelensky's permission

MoscowThis year's Victory Day military parade will be remembered for two circumstances: the first, the fear of Vladimir Putin, who decided to turn his showcase of military power into a minimal and unprecedented spectacle: without tanks or missiles, practically without foreign guests and without Western media. The second, the mockery of Volodymyr Zelensky, who, summoned at the last minute by Donald Trump, refrained from threatening Red Square with his drones and signed a sarcastic decree to “permit” the Russian celebration this Saturday.

Despite the three-way truce, which will last until Monday, the event had already been conceived as lackluster due to the psychosis of a Ukrainian attack and lasted less than 50 minutes, the shortest in modern history. The Russian president appeared with his usual solemnity and, during the traditional speech, drew a parallel between the veterans of World War II and the combatants of the war in Ukraine. “The great feat of the victorious generation inspires the soldiers who today are carrying out special military operations”, said Putin, who added that “they are facing an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc, and despite that, our heroes are advancing”. “Our cause is just. Victory has been and always will be ours”, concluded the supreme commander of the Russian army, despite this being the fifth Victory parade without victory in Ukraine.

Unlike the last edition, coinciding with the eightieth anniversary of the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany, in which Putin boasted of the weaponry used in the war in Ukraine (T-90 tanks, Iskander missiles, or S-400 air defense systems), on this occasion only columns of soldiers marched through the center of Moscow, including for the first time a representation of North Koreans who fought in the Russian region of Kursk and who wielded silver rifles. The only display of military equipment was the projection of a video with drones and nuclear weapons. And, finally, a modest aerial display by acrobatic planes drew the Russian flag in the cloudy sky of the capital.

On the stands, if last year almost thirty international leaders, such as Xi Jinping, Lula da Silva, Nicolás Maduro or Miguel Díaz-Canel, acted, in a way, as human shields, this time only the heads of state of five countries have watched the parade with Putin: the president of Belarus, Aleksander Lukashenko, the president of Laos and the sultan of Malaysia, in addition to the leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, who were not initially supposed to travel to Moscow, but joined the list on Friday afternoon. Zelenski had recommended all of them not to attend the celebrations.

Foreign televisions, which had never missed the event, have not been able to cover it after the presidential administration revoked their previously granted accreditation. The official broadcast of Russian television was not offered live, but was broadcast with a delay of about a minute to have room for any setbacks. Security measures at the Kremlin in the city center have also not been relaxed. Soldiers have continued to stand guard with their machine guns pointed at the sky, the streets and metro stations near Red Square have been emptied, and mobile internet has not worked since early morning in the hope of hindering the flight of drones.

Zelensky's joke

But no drone has approached the heart of Moscow. After a week of psychosis and crossed threats, it was finally Trump who had to come to Putin's rescue and put a stop to Zelensky. The Ukrainian president had been threatening the possibility of attacking the military parade after Russia had not respected a first ceasefire pushed by Ukraine last Wednesday. This, despite the fact that the Kremlin had warned that, if Kiev dared to spoil the Victory Day celebration, it would respond with a massive bombing of the Ukrainian capital.

Zelensky's concession has cost Putin a prisoner exchange, a thousand per side, and above all, that Ukraine has been able to sell it as a measure of grace in the face of the Russian plea. The Ukrainian leader issued a decree specifying that he “authorized” the parade for a “humanitarian purpose” and that he specifically excluded Red Square from the radius of use of his weapons for the duration of the event. The mockery did not please the Kremlin at all, which stated that it “does not need anyone's permission” to celebrate its most sacred holiday.