President Vladimir Putin of Russia presided over a greatly reduced Victory Day parade in Moscow, the grim counterpoint of previous years’ grandiose shows of military bravado. The parade featured just one T-34 tank dating from wartime.
It is held annually on May 9, a holiday that traditionally marks the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany. With Putin, it has been pushed to the forefront of nationalist feelings, feelings whereby the state is actively trying to inculcate a supra-choate memory of the Second World War to near-religious import. However, most definitely The parade was noticeably scaled down and didn’t even include the traditional fly-over by military aircraft.
During the parade, Putin reprised some familiar refrains on the war in Ukraine, portraying it as a continuation of the Great Patriotic War, calling for more wartime sacrifice from Russians, and said the fate of the motherland depends on every citizen. “All its participants, those who are on the front line, on the line of combat contact are our heroes. We bow to your steadfastness and selflessness, dedication. All Russia is with you!”Putin added.
Behind the scenes, however, the Russian government is wrought with huge internal battles. A recent bribery scandal, involving the Russian Deputy Defence Minister, Timur Ivanov, has cast a shadow on the Ministry of Defense. The bribe was huge, and Ivanov was taken into custody last week; he is a public defender of his innocence and is said to be ready to testify in detail. This gave new impetus to speculations about the backroom fighting at the highest echelons of power, and rumors about the pervading culture of corruption from within the Russian military.
He was appointed to head the State Construction Supervision Inspection and had, under his portfolio, many reconstruction projects, among them the war-ravaged city of Mariupol, where massive complaints have since erupted over shoddy workmanship and reports of misappropriation of funds. The ACF has been relentless in researching and producing these corruption scandals. The head investigator of ACF, with the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny at the helm, trended the Internet over the week towards the release of documentaries that boil down to the propelling of the Putin regime with its superficially underlying but powerfully entrenched corruption roots.
However, with all these internal struggles, the Putin regime had nevertheless been able to build a mock version of economic stability in the face of international sanctions. It was partly defense spending that lifted the Russian economy, though patently wasteful and corrupt at its very core. Most of the so-called prestige projects, especially the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, have for many long years carried a reputation for scandal and dark tales of corruption and favoritism.
In Ukraine, it was the military defeats of Russia that also reminded, and the parade was measured on Victory Day: Oryx, the free conflict monitoring website, published photos that visually confirmed more than 3,000 Russian tank losses in Ukraine; according to estimates, the Ukrainian military losses are even higher. How far diminished the Kremlin’s supply of military hardware has become, and the growing threat of Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign against Russian targets was demonstrated by how humble that parade was-to just one tank.
Even at the parade, seating arrangements placed Putin among veterans of Soviet security the most graphic underlining yet of his reliance on the security services and support for the work of the secret police that has been so widely attacked over its role in the invasion of Ukraine. This was a declaration for both domestic and foreign audiences, signaling that Putin is sticking to his ways of the authoritarian regime and is ready to do almost anything for the success of his course.
The Victory Day parade, therefore, was a display of strength and unity that carefully converged in a manner to cover up the underlying tension and challenges presently faced by Russia under Putin’s legacy. There was no blockbusting, military might around, but only a single T-34 tank on Red Square, maybe to signify the greatly diminished military might of the country and the heavy toll so far taken by the current war in Ukraine.