When President Vladimir Putin leads celebrations honoring the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany on Monday, he will issue a “doomsday” warning to the West, parading Russia’s vast weaponry while its forces continue to battle in Ukraine.
Putin will address in Red Square in front of a procession of troops, tanks, rockets, and intercontinental ballistic missiles, defiant in the face of deep Western isolation since ordering the invasion of Russia’s neighbor.
Supersonic fighters, Tu-160 strategic bombers, and, for the first time since 2010, the Il-80 “doomsday” command jet, which would carry Russia’s top brass in the event of a nuclear war, will fly over St Basil’s Cathedral, according to the Defence Ministry.
In that scenario, the Il-80 would serve as the Russian president’s mobile command center. It is technologically advanced, but precise information are classified as Russian state secrets.
The 69-year-old Kremlin leader has compared the Ukrainian conflict to the threat that Adolf Hitler’s Nazis posed to the Soviet Union in 1941.
When Putin announced a special military operation in Ukraine on Feb. 24, he stated, “The attempt to pacify the aggressor on the eve of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be a miscalculation that cost our people dearly.”
“We won’t make the same mistake twice; we have no right.”
Putin portrays the conflict in Ukraine as a fight to defend Russian speakers from Nazi persecution and to protect Russia from what he calls the US threat represented by NATO membership. The charge of fascism is dismissed by Ukraine and the West, who argue Putin is waging an unjustified campaign of aggression.
In World War II, the Soviet Union lost more people than any other country, and Putin has railed in recent years against what he regards as attempts in the West to rewrite the war’s history in order to diminish the Soviet victory.
Apart from Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat in 1812, the defeat of Nazi Germany is Russia’s most treasured military victory, despite the fact that both catastrophic invasions from the west left Russia highly sensitive about its boundaries.
This Victory Day will be overshadowed by the fighting in Ukraine.
Thousands of people have died and almost ten million have been displaced as a result of Russia’s invasion. It has also put Russia under harsh Western sanctions, raising worries of a bigger conflict between Russia and the United States, the world’s two most powerful nuclear powers.
Although the 11,000 troops marching across Red Square with 131 pieces of military hardware, according to the Defense Ministry, will be a grand spectacle, the Ukraine conflict has exposed weaknesses in Russia’s armed forces, despite Putin’s attempts to halt the post-Soviet decline during his two decades in power.
The Kremlin has been denied a swift victory, and the Russian economy is experiencing its worst recession since the fall of the Soviet Union, thanks to sanctions.
President George W. Bush attended the May 9 celebrations in Moscow less than two decades ago. According to the Kremlin, no Western leaders were invited this year.
According to two individuals close to the armed services, the US and its allies have increased weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and Putin has faced requests from some in the Russian military to unleash more firepower on Ukraine. The West has been assured by Moscow that its weaponry supply are acceptable targets.
Before May 9, there was conjecture in Moscow and Western capitals that Putin was planning a major pronouncement on Ukraine, possibly a full-fledged declaration of war or even a national mobilization.
On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed those claims, calling them “nonsense.”
Requests for comment on what Putin could say in his speech from the Red Square platform in front of Vladimir Lenin’s Mausoleum went unanswered by the Kremlin.
Last year, Putin took aim at Western exceptionalism and what he called the growth of neo-Nazism and Russophobia, themes he has brought up often when discussing Ukraine.
