Russia’s Victory Day military parade is more intimidation than celebration
Military parades are more about the present than the past. Before Leonid Brezhnev made 9 May a public holiday in 1965, commemorating the end of the Second World War was a muted affair in Russia. A society that had given more than 25 million lives to the fight was in no mood for flypasts and ticker tape. But as the Cold War heated up, Victory Day became more and more about militaristic posturing for a Western audience.
The arc of Vladimir Putin’s rule has seen a similar increase in missiles, men and MiGs at the annual jamboree. This year’s event on Friday, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, promises to be the most baroque of his two-and-a-half decades in power, featuring costumed re-enactments of the fall of Berlin and a scale replica of the Reichstag that will be stormed and beflagged.
As in the 1970s and 1980s, the true purpose of Friday’s parade is not to solemnly commemorate the millions dead but instead to draw a heavy-handed parallel between a past conflict and a present one. Putin has consistently framed his full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a repeat of the glorious vanquishing of Hitler’s Germany by labelling Ukraine’s pro-Western leadership “Nazis” and drawing parallels between the invasion of the Soviet Union and the expansion of Nato.
It does not take a student of history to see the tragic absurdity of invoking past atrocities to justify modern ones. Most world leaders, or at least the democratically elected ones, recognise Putin’s parades for what they are: acts of intimidation against enemies both foreign and domestic. This year’s “grand” event comes as the US government is attempting to strong-arm Kyiv into a peace deal with Moscow. Whether or not one believes that Ukraine should accept such a deal (however unfavourable), if Putin is able to frame next year’s Victory Day as a double celebration then the only thing it bodes well for is more military parades.
