VE Day analysis: Putin tried to project strength, but Moscow parade only revealed his isolation

CNN
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For Russian President Vladimir Putin, this year Victory Day Parade on Red Square was an opportunity to continue his war against history. He succeeded only in underscoring his geopolitical isolation.

In a speech to the assembled troops, Putin drew a direct line between his invasion of Ukraine and the sacrifices of World War II. Flanked by surviving veterans of what Russia still calls the Great Patriotic War, the Russian president has cast himself as the savior and defender of a beleaguered Russia targeted by globalist elites in the West.

Today, civilization is again at a breaking point, Putin said. Once again, a real war has been unleashed against our homeland.

While Russia sees no hostile nations in the West or East, Putin suggested that darker forces were conspiring against Moscow.

Western globalist elites still speak of their exceptionalism, pitting people against each other and dividing society, causing bloody conflicts and coups, sowing hatred, Russophobia, [and] aggressive nationalism, he says. The Ukrainian nation became hostage to a coup that led to a criminal regime ruled by its western masters. He became a pawn for their cruel and selfish plans.

It’s worth unboxing for a moment. His long-held view of Putin that Ukraine is not a legitimate nation Ukrainians and Russians, according to him, are one people, and the Ukrainian state is an artificial construction. In his conspiratorial view of the world, states like Ukraine are just vassals, and Washington calls the shots. And if a shadowy global cabal is pulling the strings in Kyiv, that belief justifies what Russia calls its special military operation in Ukraine.

Let us remember that it was a real popular uprising, not, say, the CIA or George Soros that brought people to kyiv’s Maidan Square to support Ukraine’s aspirations to join the European Unionleading to the ousting of the pro-Russian Ukrainian president in 2014. And that Russian-speaking Ukrainians and even some Russian nationals are also fighting and dying alongside Ukraine.

But Putin is immune to fact-checking exercises here. The collective memory of the Second World War is the what Russia has closest to a state religion, and May 9, when Russians commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, marks the holiest day. For domestic audiences, the Victory Day Parade offers a visual parallel between veterans of the war that ended 78 years ago and participants in Russia’s war against Ukraine today.

According to state media, more than 500 participants in Russia’s so-called special military operation in Ukraine took part in the parade in Red Square on Tuesday. And in his speech, Putin presented them as the heirs of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Unsurprisingly, Ukrainians oppose such historic gaslighting.

In video remarks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had submitted a bill to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada parliament to change official Victory Day celebrations from May 9 to May 8, and compared the aggression of Russia to that of Hitler’s Germany.

May 8 is when most nations of the world remember the greatness of the victory over the Nazis, Zelensky said. We will not allow the common victory of the nations of the anti-Hitler coalition to be appropriate and we will not allow lies as if the victory could have taken place without the participation of any country or nation.

Zelensky also welcomed an important visitor to Kyiv on the same day as Putin’s Victory Day parade: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who arrived with a promise of continued European support. to Ukraine.

Ukraine is on the front line to defend everything that we Europeans hold dear: our freedom, our democracy, our freedom of thought and expression, von der Leyen said. Courageously, Ukraine is fighting for the ideals of the Europe we celebrate today. In Russia, Putin and his regime have destroyed these values. And now they are trying to destroy them here in Ukraine because they are afraid of the success you represent and the example you are showing, and they are afraid of your path to the European Union.

And in his joint press conference with von der Leyen, Zelensky was able to rain down a bit on Putin’s VE Day parade, noting Russia’s costly and incremental progress on the battlefield.

They [the Russians] were unable to capture Bakhmut, he said, referring to the besieged and badly damaged eastern Ukrainian city. It was the last major military operation they wanted to complete before May 9th. And unfortunately, the city no longer exists. Everything is completely destroyed. So they need information to present it as a win they need to conquer something in a city [but] they failed to do so.

Russia’s annual Victory Day celebrations are meant to be a grand public spectacle married to an advertisement for state power. This year’s parade showcased some of Russia’s military might with its S-400 air defense system and Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, part of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal, but a massive procession of modern tanks , the pride of the Russian army, was conspicuously absent.

And von der Leyens’ visit to kyiv highlighted Putin’s isolation from Europe and the West. Among the most prominent visitors featured at Putin’s Victory Day celebrations were an EU-sanctioned president (Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus), a Central Asian strongman (Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan) and the dynastic leader of an oil state (Serdar Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan).

On the battlefields of Ukraine, the setback being distributed to the Russian forces in the Bakhmut meat grinder Couldn’t be a sharper contrast to the pomp and circumstance in Red Square.

This fact was reported by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, who denounced the Russian military leadership on social networks.

Today they [Ukrainians] tear the flanks in the Artemovsk [the Russian name for Bakhmut] direction, regrouping in Zaporizhzhia. And a counter-offensive is about to begin, he said on social media on Tuesday. They make it absolutely clear that the counter-offensive will be on the pitch, not on television.

Victory Day, Prigozhin added, belonged to a past generation.

Victory Day is the victory of our grandfathers, he said. We did not deserve this victory by a millimeter.