Why Russia’s Victory Day parade was a pared-down affair

Russia’s Victory Day is typically a huge day of celebration across the country and a time for Moscow to flex its military muscle.

But this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered just a brief speech in the Red Square to mark Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

And the roughly 10-minute parade was described by his supporters and critics alike as notably lackluster, featuring just one Soviet-era tank. There were also about 8,000 troops present, mostly cadets, compared to the usual 11,000.

The scaled-down performance may have been strategic. Ludmila Isurin, a professor at Ohio State University who studies Eastern Europe, said Putin knew his country “would not appreciate a big show of military might when their sons are dying.”

“It’s not really in their mentality to appreciate any grand celebration when the country is at war,” she said.

Yet Putin’s critics still seized on the diminished celebrations.

Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs, said Russia “didn’t have any modern tanks, infantry fighting vehicles or aviation.”

“It was one of the smallest in Russian history, taking less than 10 minutes,” Gerashchenko tweeted.

Some Russians were also critical of the event. Yelena Orlova told the Associated Press the parade was simply “weak.”

“We’re upset, but that’s all right,” Orlova said. “It will be better in the future.”

Even so, the narrative in Russian media painted a different picture, trumpeting the celebration and the patriotism as usual.

Isurin said the dramatic headlines of underperformance in the West likely do not reflect how Russians saw the event.

Russian military bloggers — who have more independence than traditional media — were divided over the parade.

Some bloggers pointed out the parade failed to project strength with fewer deployed combat vehicles, while others said it was carried out more tactfully as a war rages in Ukraine.

Regardless, many notable Russian blogger accounts shared pictures of the pompous celebration with much of the usual fanfare from their subscribers.

“There was a lot of controversy as to whether a parade was needed at such a time,” wrote Alexander Kots, a blogger with more than 600,000 subscribers. “And today I looked at the faces of veterans on the Kremlin podium and realized: they need it.”

Though his remarks were brief, Putin drove home propaganda messaging around Russia fighting an existential war against an oppressive, Nazi-like Western alliance.

“Their goal — and there is nothing new about it — is to break apart and destroy our country, to make null and void the outcomes of World War II,” Putin said in the speech at the Red Square.

And though the U.S. and Western allies are attempting to isolate Russia, Putin invited leaders from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan to stand with him in Moscow.

No foreign leaders attended Victory Day celebrations in Moscow last year. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Putin was trying to showcase his continued influence in Central Asia.

The quick, less grandiose event may also have been an attempt to dodge domestic blowback over the massive human toll of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

A staple of Victory Day is to remember and honor those killed in World War II, which is called the Great Patriotic War in Russia. The Soviet Union saw more than 22 million civilian and military casualties in the war.

On Victory Day, the tradition is for Russians to march and carry pictures of those who lost their lives in the war in a procession called the Immortal Regiment — but many cities across the nation canceled the activity on Tuesday.

The official reason given by the organizers of the event, a group called Immortal Regiment of Russia, was that cities bordering Ukraine could not march out in a mass crowd due to security threats, according to Russian state media TASS.

Ecaterina Locoman, a senior lecturer of political science at the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, said the limitation of the Immortal Regiment march could have been born out of a desire to avoid demonstrations against the war.

Locoman noted Russia has not updated its official death count from last year — an estimate of around 5,000 — when Western analysts have put the number killed and wounded at up to 200,000.

“Maybe they are indeed afraid that too many mothers might come in the streets with pictures of their sons asking for accountability,” Locoman said.

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