Vladimir Putin did not invent the idea of a great parade in Moscow to mark victory against the Nazis. Although during Soviet times the important date was the November anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, occasional military parades marked the big anniversaries of the end of the Second World War. Annual parades on 9 May started under Boris Yeltsin in 1995 but it was Vladimir Putin who gave these parades their importance, an opportunity to demonstrate his country’s growing military might, including its most advanced and deadliest hardware, and to promote his nationalist and militaristic cult of the Great Patriotic War. (For a history see this thread from Madi Kapparov).

Symbolism of this sort can backfire. It was used to invoke a time of terrible sacrifices and historic triumphs. This should be important when Russia is at war again, except that now the sacrifice is combined with declining power and an absence of triumph. The problem was evident last year, when, as I then wrote in a post, the parade was anti-climactic and Putin’s speech downbeat. It was a victory parade without victories.

This was even more true with this year’s event. Russia’s stocks of weapons and reserves of manpower have been depleted and what is spare has been sent to the front. An additional complicating factor was the occasional but awkward appearance of Ukrainian drones over Russia. Outside of Moscow ‘six Russian regions, occupied Crimea, and 21 cities’ cancelled their parades because of ‘security concerns’.

To say the Moscow parade was scaled down would be an understatement. 12,000 marching troops were on show as against 15,000 last year, many cadets and paramilitaries, with elite units notably absent. There was no flypast. In 2021 there were 197 sundry vehicles in the parade, last year they still managed 131. This year 51. This included only one tank. A single T-34-85, left over from 1945, was on display compared with the modern T-90Ms and T-14s last year. Presumably there were some more tracked vehicles available but the authorities may have been sensitive to accusations anything combat capable should have been at the front. Also missing this year was the so-called ‘Immortal Regiment march’, held in memory of those killed in World War II, in which millions of civilians across the country carry photographs of relatives who fought in the Great Patriotic War. Here the concern was that people might take the opportunity to march with pictures of loved ones killed in the current war.