Putin addresses annual Victory Day parade on Red Square

Vladimir Putin this morning declared his nuclear forces were at full combat readiness in an unsettling speech amid Victory Day celebrations in Moscow‘s Red Square.  

Addressing top officials, members of the armed forces – and millions of Russians watching at home – the Russian President said the Kremlin would do everything to avoid global confrontation, but warned that any threat would be met with a strong response.

Legions of Russian servicemen later marched in unison through Red Square as Putin, alongside the likes of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, looked on. 

Victory Day, celebrated each year on May 9, is a celebration of Russia‘s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II – an integral part of the national identity that Putin has turned into a pillar of his quarter-century in power – and a justification of his move into Ukraine.

The celebrations have typically gone to great lengths to display Moscow’s militaristic prowess – recent years have seen all manner of weaponry, including several nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, being paraded past the Kremlin. 

But more than two years into the war in Ukraine, this year’s procession was comparatively lacking in military hardware. 

Little more than a few mobile missile launchers drove through the parade square – though some other armoured divisions were seen rolling through a few main roads in the Russian capital. 

Even though few veterans of what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War are still alive 79 years after Berlin fell to the Red Army, the victory over Nazi Germany remains the most important and widely revered symbol of the country’s prowess.

Today’s festivities across Russia, led by Putin who this week began his fifth term in office, recall that wartime sacrifice in what has become its most important secular holiday.

The Soviet Union lost about 27 million people in the war, an estimate that many historians consider conservative, scarring virtually every family.

Nazi troops overran much of the western Soviet Union when they invaded in June 1941, before being driven back all the way to Berlin, where the USSR’s hammer and sickle flag was raised above the ruined capital.

The US, UK, France and other allies mark the end of the war in Europe on May 8.

The immense suffering and sacrifice in cities like Stalingrad, Kursk and Putin’s native Leningrad – now St. Petersburg – still serve as a powerful symbol of the country’s ability to prevail against seemingly overwhelming challenges.

Since coming to power on the last day of 1999, Putin has made May 9 an important part of his political agenda, featuring displays of military might.

Columns of tanks and missiles roll across Red Square and squadrons of fighter jets roar overhead as medal-bedecked veterans join him to review the parade. 

Many wear the black-and-orange St. George’s ribbon that is traditionally associated with Victory Day.

Putin, 71, talks frequently about his family history, sharing memories of his father, who fought on the front during the Nazi siege of the city and was badly wounded.

As Putin tells it, his father, also named Vladimir, came home from a military hospital during the war to see workers trying to take away his wife, Maria, who had been declared dead of starvation.

But the elder Putin did not believe she had died – saying she had only lost consciousness, weak with hunger.

Their first child, Viktor, died during the siege when he was 3, one of more than 1 million Leningrad residents who died in the 872-day blockade, most of them from starvation.

For several years, Putin carried a photo of his father in Victory Day marches – as did others honouring relatives who were war veterans – in what was called the ‘Immortal Regiment.’

Those demonstrations were suspended during the coronavirus pandemic and then again amid security concerns after the start of the fighting in Ukraine.

As part of his efforts to burnish the Soviet legacy and trample on any attempts to question it, Russia has introduced laws that criminalised the ‘rehabilitation of Nazism’ that include punishing the ‘desecration’ of memorials or challenging Kremlin versions of World War II history.

When he sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Putin evoked World War II in seeking to justify his actions that Kyiv and its Western allies denounced as an unprovoked war of aggression.

Putin cited the ‘denazification’ of Ukraine as a main goal of Moscow, falsely describing the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, as neo-Nazis.

Putin tried to cast Ukraine’s veneration of some of its nationalist leaders who cooperated with the Nazis in World War II as a sign of Kyiv’s purported Nazi sympathies.

Many observers see Putin’s focus on World War II as part of his efforts to revive the USSR’s clout and prestige and his reliance on Soviet practices.

‘It’s the continuous self-identification with the USSR as the victor of Nazism and the lack of any other strong legitimacy that forced the Kremlin to declare `denazification’ as the goal of the war,’ Nikolay Epplee said in a commentary for Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

The Russian leadership, he said, has ‘locked itself up in a worldview limited by the Soviet past.’