The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has appealed to the unity and the millions of victims of the Great Patria War, the Soviet Front of World War II, not to cease his invasion of Ukraine 80 years later. “The truth and justice are on our side. The whole country supports the participants of the special military operation,” said the Russian leader, flanked in the tribune of the Red Square of Moscow by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. A unit of Asian superpower has paraded with thousands of troops and dozens of armored armored vehicles in a force exhibition that Putin needed. For the Russian leader, this has been his fourth victory day without victory in his “special operation” against Ukraine.
Putinism gradually melts the sacrifice of dozens of millions of Soviet citizens in the Great Patria War of 80 years ago with their current Ukraine invasion to justify it. President Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, recalled on the eve that more than eight million citizens of his country died during the Nazi invasion. However, in the posters deployed next to the Kremlin you read “La Victoria will be with us”, in the future, not in the past. One of the outstanding points of the parade has been the march of veterans of the current war. A commander of a drone unit awarded the Hero Order of Russia has led the passage of a platoon of special forces.
“We will always trust our unity in our military and civil affairs; in the achievement of our strategic objectives, to work for the greatness and prosperity of Russia,” Putin said by appealing to the support of the Russians. The Kremlin feared a Ukrainian sabotage that has not happened, and for this it reinforced security around the Russian capital. In addition to having the “protection” given by two dozens of international leaders in their tribune, the authorities cut internet in all mobiles of the European part of Russia this Friday and an immense police contingent monitored the city.
Support for negotiations
However, the tiredness of the war makes a dent among the Russians. The majority of citizens passively support their president and, if for them, would end the invasion. According to the last poll of the Independent Center Levada, 30% of the Russians supported the conflict in April, nine percentage points less than a year and 14 less than at the beginning of the invasion in February 2022, while 61% wanted to establish direct negotiations already with Ukraine.
For months it was speculated that the new US government would be present at the most important year event for Putin. It has not been so. His negotiations on Ukraine are stagnant and Donald Trump has belittled one of the pillars of Putinism: Victory Day.
The Russian regime punishes with fines, and even arrests, to make less the Soviet sacrifice against Nazism. Moscow highlights the idea that no other state suffered more than the USSR and its 27 million dead. Trump, however, has proclaimed day 8 as his victory day – for the time difference between Germany and the USSR during capitulation – and has affirmed, several times, that “no country made more, from afar” than the United States.
“The Soviet troops determined the result of all World War II,” said the Russian president to the American during his speech in the Red Square, which left the other allies in a secondary role: “We will always remember that the opening of the second front in Europe after the decisive battles in the Soviet Union approached the victory.”
Lula and Fico, present
In any case, Putin has shown the world and the Russians who are not alone despite the war that unleashed against Ukraine. In the gallery, almost three dozen leaders have accompanied him, including his great support against the United States, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Together with the leaders of the two nuclear powers was also the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, to disappoint the western leaders who supported him to be re -elected to the authoritarian drift of Jair Bolsonaro.
The event has also attended five Díscolos Eurodiputados, President Serbio, Aleksandar Vucic, and the Slovak Prime Minister, Robert Fico, despite the complaints of Brussels and kyiv. Both were seen on the eve of Victory Day on a terrace overlooking the Red Square and the bridge in which the former Vice Russian Prime Minister Borís Nemtsov was just killed for leading the protests against the intervention of the Kremlin in the Donbás War. “Serbs and Slovaks are brothers forever,” said Vucic.
Until 1995, with the mentor of Putin, Borís Yeltsin, in power, only four military marches had been made in the Red Square, one of them that of 1945. With the putinism the fighter vehicles were added to the military’s parade.
The Kremlin has turned this year’s military parade into an attempt to exhibit. To the beat of Sacred Warone of the hymns of the Soviet victory, have paraded through the red square the troops of several friends, including China, Vietnam and Tayikistan, as well as dozens of military vehicles. This has been the first day of the victory of the new Russian Defense Minister, Andréi Belousov. Among the vehicles has highlighted the absence of the Armata combat car, which suffered a breakdown in the trials as happened years ago and whose presence in Ukraine has been testimonial.
In addition to the military parade, Russia celebrates its victory day with festivals. The most important act is the march called Immortal Regiment, a civil procession with the photographs of relatives who fought and suffered the Nazi invasion. The initiative was born spontaneously in the city of Omsk in 2012, but the Kremlin appropriated the idea just as it promoted the use of St. Jorge’s film, a black and orange symbol used by the Russian Empire, to celebrate the Soviet victory. That tribute to the millions of victims of 80 years ago now includes the photographs of the combatants in the invasion of Ukraine.
Not all Russian cities have celebrated the immortal regiment. The authorities canceled the act for security reasons in Moscow, the border provinces with Ukraine and other regions. One of them Belgorod, where the local authority has accused Ukraine of having triggered a drone against the headquarters of the Regional Government without provoking victims.
