Introduction
To 21st-century Russians, 9 May is the most important date in the state calendar. It is Victory Day which celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. It occurs one day later than Victory-in-Europe Day as two separate surrender documents were signed by Germany with the Western Allies in Reims and with the then Soviet Union in Berlin. During the Soviet era, Victory Day was traditionally marked by a massive cold-war display of military forces parading through Red Square, intercontinental ballistic missiles and all. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the parades were suspended, only to be revived in 1995, the year the golden jubilee of the victory was celebrated.
Although the parade on the 75th anniversary in 2020 was cancelled due to Covid-19, clearly 9 May was an important day for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. As Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, it was his opportunity to follow Russia’s leaders from Joseph Stalin onwards to take his place on the grandstand in front of Lenin’s tomb to review the troops and deliver a rousing Victory Day speech about Russia’s greatness.
While the parade was scaled back in 2023 (it featured just one tank), the Kremlin’s rhetoric was not. Nor was Russian aggression abroad: some 200,000 Russian troops had been sent across Russia’s borders to invade and capture Ukraine, more than the USSR had deployed in its attempts to conquer Afghanistan from 1979 (a failed conquest lasting until 1989). Likewise, fighting Ukraine’s standing army of 400,000 had turned into a bloodbath.
‘Today civilization is once again at a decisive turning point,’ Putin proclaimed in his angry speech as if Russia was under a military attack within its borders rather than an aggressor beyond its country. ‘A real war has been unleashed against our Motherland.’
Putin drew exotic parallels, describing Russia’s small neighbour as if the country was an existential threat on the doorstep of the gigantic, hulking bulk of the Russian Federation. As he had done in crescendo since 2014, he labelled Ukraine’s government ‘neo-Nazis’ and a ‘criminal regime’—neglecting the fact that in Ukraine presidents stood after two terms and that he himself, following in the footsteps of Hitler, had absorbed all power since his first-ever election. Nor did he mention that during World War II Ukraine had paid a heavy price for helping defend Russia’s landmass against Nazi Germany: half of the 27 million Soviet casualties according to some estimates were Ukrainians, then almost a third of the country’s population. In 1961, the message on the same day was very different. Kyiv (then still called Kiev) was awarded the Order of Lenin for its resistance against the Nazi threat to the USSR and proclaimed a Hero City.
Putin welcomed th
