Why Victory Day in Russia Is Different This Year

Russian servicemen march as they take part in a rehearsal of the Victory Day military parade, in central Moscow on May 4, 2022. (AFP)
Russian servicemen march as they take part in a rehearsal of the Victory Day military parade, in central Moscow on May 4, 2022. (AFP)
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Why Victory Day in Russia Is Different This Year

Russian servicemen march as they take part in a rehearsal of the Victory Day military parade, in central Moscow on May 4, 2022. (AFP)
Russian servicemen march as they take part in a rehearsal of the Victory Day military parade, in central Moscow on May 4, 2022. (AFP)

The invasion of Ukraine means that fewer Russian tanks and other military hardware will rumble through Moscow’s Red Square on Monday, when the country marks its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The patriotic fervor associated with the sacred holiday, however, could be as strong as ever.

This year's Victory Day won't just honor a conflict that ended 77 years ago. Many Russians will be thinking about the thousands of troops fighting in neighboring Ukraine, Signs of support for the military have grown across the country since the invasion began Feb. 24, with the letter "Z" appearing on billboards and signs in the streets and subways, and on television and social media.

The Kremlin has refused to refer to the fighting in Ukraine as a "war,” instead calling it a "special military operation." Some observers believe that President Vladimir Putin could use the holiday to finally declare the operation to be a war in order to bolster Russia's national commitment to the effort.

A look at the significance of Victory Day in Russia:

War and remembrance
The Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 million people in World War II, which it calls the Great Patriotic War. The conflict, which devastated cities and the countryside, caused enormous suffering and left a deep scar in the national psyche.

Victory Day is a rare event in the nation’s divisive post-Soviet history that is revered by all political players, and the Kremlin has used that sentiment to encourage patriotic pride and underline Russia’s role as a global power.

The annual celebrations feature a massive military parade on Red Square showcasing the latest armaments from tanks to fighter jets to nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.

This year, the array of weapons to be displayed in the parade has been significantly curtailed from last year in an apparent reflection of the military's heavy engagement in Ukraine.

Fighting 'neo-Nazis'
In ordering the invasion, Putin declared that it was aimed at the "demilitarization" of Ukraine to remove a perceived military threat to Russia by "neo-Nazis" - rhetoric condemned by Ukraine and the West as a fictitious cover for a blunt act of aggression.

To try to back up the claim, Putin and his officials have pointed to the adulation by Ukraine's right-wing groups of nationalist leaders Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, who sided with the Nazis during World War II and their perceived use of Nazi units' symbols.

The rhetoric also has been used by the Kremlin to try to bolster public support for the war amid heavy losses of troops and equipment and massive economic damage from Western sanctions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, has derided the Kremlin "denazification" claim. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov fired back by drawing a parallel between Zelenskyy and Adolf Hitler - a statement that has drawn sharp criticism from Israel.

Rushing the offensive?
Some in Ukraine and the West expected Putin to try to seek quick gains before the May 9 holiday in a possible attempt to present it as a decisive victory and use it as an exit from what increasingly looks like a disastrous quagmire bleeding Russia's resources and threatening its stability.

After a failed attempt to storm Kyiv and other big cities in Ukraine's north in the early stages of the war, the Kremlin has shifted its focus to the eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas, where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian government forces since 2014. That conflict erupted weeks after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

The Russian military has rearmed and resupplied its forces withdrawn from Kyiv and moved them to Donbas in an apparent attempt to encircle and destroy the most capable and seasoned Ukrainian troops concentrated there.

But that offensive in the east has faced staunch Ukrainian defenses and made only incremental advances, dashing Kremlin hopes for a quick victory. Significant gains look all but impossible before May 9.

In an interview this week, Lavrov said: "Our military isn't going to artificially link its action to any date, including Victory Day."

Upping the ante
Some Russian hard-liners have criticized the Kremlin for using only a limited force and urged a nationwide mobilization effort. Some Western officials and observers believe Putin may use May 9 to formally declare a war and announce a total mobilization of the population to boost troop numbers for an offensive.

"He’s been rolling the pitch, laying the ground for being able to say, ‘Look, this is now a war against Nazis, and what I need is more people,’" British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told LBC Radio last week.

Ukraine's intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, issued a similar warning Monday, alleging that Russia has covertly begun preparations for a broad mobilization.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the claims as "nonsense" on Wednesday.

Russian authorities have claimed that only volunteer contract soldiers have been fighting in Ukraine, even though many conscripts were taken prisoner in the war's initial days.

Russia's military has about 1 million service personnel - 400,000 of them contract soldiers, including 147,000 in ground forces. Western officials estimated the initial strength of Russia's invasion force at about 180,000.

The military acknowledged losing 1,351 soldiers as of March 25 and hasn't updated its casualty numbers since then. Western officials have said Russian losses were much heavier and estimated that up to a quarter of Moscow's initial attacking force was made unfit for combat.

If the war drags on, the current Russian troops numbers in Ukraine could be insufficient to sustain the operations, forcing the Kremlin to rely on poorly trained conscripts or call up reservists.

The Kremlin faces a stark choice between trying to win the war with a limited force or attempting to bolster its troops in Ukraine with draftees and reservists, a move that could bring public outrage and potentially destabilize the political situation.



From India-Pakistan to Iran and Ukraine, a New Era of Escalation

The Iron Dome, the Israeli air defense system, intercepts missiles fired from Iran, over Tel Aviv, Israel, 17 June 2025. (EPA)
The Iron Dome, the Israeli air defense system, intercepts missiles fired from Iran, over Tel Aviv, Israel, 17 June 2025. (EPA)
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From India-Pakistan to Iran and Ukraine, a New Era of Escalation

The Iron Dome, the Israeli air defense system, intercepts missiles fired from Iran, over Tel Aviv, Israel, 17 June 2025. (EPA)
The Iron Dome, the Israeli air defense system, intercepts missiles fired from Iran, over Tel Aviv, Israel, 17 June 2025. (EPA)

By Peter Apps

As India’s defense chief attended an international security conference in Singapore in May, soon after India and Pakistan fought what many in South Asia now dub “the four-day war”, he had a simple message: Both sides expect to do it all again.

It was a stark and perhaps counterintuitive conclusion: the four-day military exchange, primarily through missiles and drones, appears to have been among the most serious in history between nuclear-armed nations.

Indeed, reports from both sides suggest it took a direct intervention from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to halt an escalating exchange of drones and rockets.

Speaking to a Reuters colleague in Singapore, however, Indian Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan denied either nation had come close to the “nuclear threshold”, describing a “lot of messaging” from both sides.

“A new space for conventional operations has been created and I think that is the new norm,” he said, vowing that New Delhi would continue to respond militarily to any militant attacks on India suspected to have originated from Pakistan.

How stable that "space" might be and how great the risk of escalation for now remains unclear. However, there have been several dramatic examples of escalation in several already volatile global stand-offs over the past two months.

As well as the “four-day” war between India and Pakistan last month, recent weeks have witnessed what is now referred to in Israel and Iran as their “12-day war”. It ended this week with a US-brokered ceasefire after Washington joined the fray with massive air strikes on Tehran’s underground nuclear sites.

Despite years of confrontation, Israel and Iran had not struck each other’s territory directly until last year, while successive US administrations have held back from similar steps.

As events in Ukraine have shown, conflict between major nations can become normalized at speed – whether that means “just” an exchange of drones and missiles, or a more existential battle.

More concerning still, such conflicts appear to have become more serious throughout the current decade, with plenty of room for further escalation.

This month, that included an audacious set of Ukrainian-organized drone strikes on long-range bomber bases deep inside Russian territory, destroying multiple aircraft which, as well as striking Ukraine, have also been responsible for carrying the Kremlin’s nuclear deterrent.

All of that is a far cry from the original Cold War, in which it was often assumed that any serious military clash – particularly involving nuclear forces or the nations that possessed them – might rapidly escalate beyond the point of no return. But it does bring with it new risks of escalation.

Simmering in the background, meanwhile, is the largest and most dangerous confrontation of them all - that between the US and China, with US officials saying Beijing has instructed its military to be prepared to move against Taiwan from 2027, potentially sparking a hugely wider conflict.

As US President Donald Trump headed to Europe this week for the annual NATO summit, just after bombing Iran, it was clear his administration hopes such a potent show of force might be enough to deter Beijing in particular from pushing its luck.

“American deterrence is back,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Pentagon press briefing the morning after the air strikes took place.

Iran’s initial response of drones and missiles fired at a US air base in Qatar – with forewarning to the US that the fusillade was coming – appeared deliberately moderate to avoid further escalation.

Addressing senators at their confirmation hearing on Tuesday, America’s next top commanders in Europe and the Middle East were unanimous in their comments that the US strikes against Iran would strengthen Washington's hand when it came to handling Moscow and Beijing.

Chinese media commentary was more mixed. Han Peng, head of state-run China Media Group's North American operations, said the US had shown weakness to the world by not wanting to get dragged into the Iran conflict due to its “strategic contraction”.

Other social media posts talked of how vulnerable Iran looked, with nationalist commentator Hu Xijn warning: "If one day we have to get involved in a war, we must be the best at it."

LONG ARM OF AMERICA

On that front, the spectacle of multiple US B-2 bombers battering Iran’s deepest-buried nuclear bunkers - having flown all the way from the US mainland apparently undetected - will not have gone unnoticed in Moscow or Beijing.

Nor will Trump’s not so subtle implications that unless Iran backed down, similar weapons might be used to kill its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or other senior figures, wherever they might hide.

None of America’s adversaries have the ability to strike without warning in that way against hardened, deepened targets, and the B-2 – now being replaced by the more advanced B-21 – has no foreign equal.

Both are designed to penetrate highly sophisticated air defenses, although how well they would perform against cutting-edge Russian or Chinese systems would only be revealed in an actual conflict.

China’s effort at building something similar, the H-2, has been trailed in Chinese media for years – and US officials say Beijing is striving hard to make it work.

Both China and Russia have fifth-generation fighters with some stealth abilities, but none have the range or carrying capacity to target the deepest Western leadership or weapons bunkers with conventional munitions.

As a result, any Chinese or Russian long-range strikes – whether conventional or nuclear – would have to be launched with missiles that could be detected in advance.

Even without launching such weapons, however, nuclear powers have their own tools to deliver threats.

An analysis of the India-Pakistan “four-day war” in May done by the Stimson Center suggested that as Indian strikes became more serious on the third day of the war, Pakistan might have taken similar, deliberately visible steps to ready its nuclear arsenal to grab US attention and help conclude the conflict.

Indian newspapers have reported that a desperate Pakistan did indeed put pressure on the US to encourage India to stop, as damage to its forces was becoming increasingly serious, and threatening the government.

Pakistan denies that – but one of its most senior officers was keen to stress that any repeat of India’s strikes would bring atomic risk.

"Nothing happened this time," said the chairman of the Pakistani joint chiefs, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, also speaking to Reuters at the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore. "But you can't rule out any strategic miscalculation at any time."

For now, both sides have pulled back troops from the border – while India appears determined to use longer term strategies to undermine its neighbor, including withdrawing from a treaty controlling the water supplies of the Indus River, which Indian Prime Minister Modi said he now intends to dam. Pakistani officials have warned that could be another act of war.

DRONES AND DETERRENCE

Making sure Iran never obtains the leverage of a working atomic bomb, of course, was a key point of the US and Israeli air strikes. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed that the dangers of a government so hostile to Israel obtaining such a weapon would always be intolerable.

For years, government and private sector analysts had predicted Iran might respond to an assault on its nuclear facilities with attacks by its proxies across the Middle East, including on Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, as well as using thousands of missiles, drones and attack craft to block international oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

In reality, the threat of an overwhelming US military response – and hints of an accompanying switch of US policy to outright regime change or decapitation in Iran, coupled with the Israeli military success against Hezbollah and Hamas, appear to have forced Tehran to largely stand down.

What that means longer term is another question.

Flying to the Netherlands on Tuesday for the NATO summit, Trump appeared to be offering Iran under its current Shi'ite Muslim clerical rulers a future as a “major trading nation” providing they abandoned their atomic program.

The Trump administration is also talking up the success of its Operation ROUGH RIDER against the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen.

Vice Admiral Bradley Cooper, selected as the new head of US Central Command, told senators the US military had bombed the Houthis for 50 days before a deal was struck in which the Houthis agreed to stop attacking US and other international shipping in the Red Sea.

But Cooper also noted that like other militant groups in the Middle East, the Houthis were becoming increasingly successful in building underground bases out of the reach of smaller US weapons, as well as using unmanned systems to sometimes overwhelm their enemies.

“The nature and character of warfare is changing before our very eyes,” he said.

Behind the scenes and sometimes in public, US and allied officials say they are still assessing the implications of the success of Ukraine and Israel in infiltrating large numbers of short-range drones into Russia and Iran respectively for two spectacular attacks in recent weeks.

According to Ukrainian officials, the drones were smuggled into Russia hidden inside prefabricated buildings on the back of trucks, with the Russian drivers unaware of what they were carrying until the drones were launched.

Israel’s use of drones on the first day of its campaign against Iran is even more unsettling for Western nations wondering what such an attack might look like.

Its drones were smuggled into Iran and in some cases assembled in secret there to strike multiple senior Iranian leaders and officials in their homes as they slept in the small hours of the morning on the first day of the campaign.

As they met in The Hague this week for their annual summit, NATO officials and commanders will have considered what they must do to build their own defenses to ensure they do not prove vulnerable to a similar attack.

Judging by reports in the Chinese press, military officials there are now working on the same.