{"id":63774,"date":"2026-05-09T13:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T13:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/63774\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T13:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T13:02:15","slug":"putin-attends-scaled-back-ww2-victory-parade-as-worries-deepen-over-ukraine-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/63774\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin attends scaled-back WW2 victory parade as worries deepen over Ukraine war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia held its most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years on Saturday due to the threat of\u00a0attack from Ukraine<\/a>,\u00a0where \u200bvictory for Moscow\u2019s forces has proven elusive more than four years into the deadliest European conflict since World War Two.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0May 9 parade<\/a>\u00a0on Red Square \u200cmarks Russia\u2019s most revered national holiday \u2013 a time to celebrate the Soviet Union\u2019s victory over Nazi Germany and to pay homage to the 27 million Soviet citizens, including many from Ukraine, who perished.<\/p>\n

Once used to show off Russia\u2019s vast military, including its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, the parade this year had no tanks or other military equipment rolling over the cobbles of Red Square.<\/p>\n

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Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a military parade on Victory Day, Moscow, May 9, 2026. via REUTERS<\/p>\n

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The parade marks the 81st anniversary of the Soviet Union\u2019s victory over Nazi Germany in WW2, May 9, 2026. via REUTERS<\/p>\n

Instead, weapons including a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile, the new Arkhangelsk nuclear submarine, the Peresvet laser weapon, the Sukhoi Su-57 fighter, the S-500 surface-to-air missile system and a host of drones and artillery were shown on giant screens on Red Square, and on state television.<\/p>\n

Soldiers and sailors, some of whom have served in Ukraine,\u00a0marched\u00a0and cheered as President\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0looked on, seated beside Russian veterans in the shadow of Vladimir Lenin\u2019s Mausoleum. North Korean troops, who fought against Ukrainians in Russia\u2019s Kursk region, also marched.<\/p>\n

Fighter planes flew\u00a0above the towers of the Kremlin and\u00a0Putin made an eight-minute speech, promising victory in the war in Ukraine which the Kremlin calls the \u201cspecial military operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great feat of the victorious generation inspires the soldiers carrying out the tasks of the special military operation today,\u201d Putin said. \u201cThey are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc. And in spite of that, our heroes march forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

TRUMP WANTS \u2018BIG EXTENSION\u2019 TO CEASEFIRE<\/p>\n

After Russia and Ukraine accused each other of violating unilateral ceasefires they had each declared over recent days, President Trump\u00a0\u200bannounced a\u00a0three-day ceasefire\u00a0from Saturday to Monday<\/a> that was supported by the Kremlin and Kyiv.<\/p>\n

The two sides also agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners.<\/p>\n

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Russian service members march during the military parade in Red Square in central Moscow, May 9, 2026. via REUTERS<\/p>\n

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Putin delivers a speech during the parade in Red Square in central Moscow, May 9, 2026. via REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to see it stop. Russia-Ukraine \u2014 it\u2019s \u200bthe worst thing since World War Two in terms of life. Twenty-five thousand young soldiers every month. It\u2019s crazy,\u201d Trump told reporters in Washington.<\/p>\n

He added that he would \u201clike to see a big extension\u201d of the ceasefire. There were no reports of violations of the ceasefire from either Moscow or Kyiv.<\/p>\n

Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, had warned that any attempt by Kyiv to disrupt Saturday\u2019s event would lead to a \u200bmassive missile strike on the Ukrainian capital. Moscow told foreign diplomats that they should\u00a0evacuate Kyiv\u00a0staff in the event of such an attack.<\/p>\n

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Russia\u2019s MiG-29 jet fighters of the Swifts and Su-30SM jet fighters of the Russian Knights aerobatic teams during a flypast, May 9, 2026. REUTERS<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a tongue-in-cheek decree \u201callowing\u201d \u200bRussia\u2019s May 9 military parade to proceed and saying Ukrainian weapons would not target Red Square.<\/p>\n

Security was tight in Moscow. Reuters pictures showed soldiers with guns atop pickup trucks and roads blocked around the \u200ccentre of \u2060the capital, which along with the surrounding region has a population of 22 million.<\/p>\n

WAR IN UKRAINE HAUNTS RUSSIA\u2019S PARADE<\/p>\n

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Red Army eventually pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin, where Adolf Hitler killed himself and the red Soviet Victory Banner was raised over the Reichstag in May 1945.<\/p>\n

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Russia\u2019s Defense Minister Andrei Belousov attends the parade in Red Square in central Moscow, May 9, 2026. via REUTERS<\/p>\n

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Russian servicemen stand in a formation before the Victory Day military parade at Red Square, May 9, 2026. POOL\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Nazi Germany\u2019s unconditional surrender came into force at 11:01 p.m. on May 8, 1945, marked as \u201cVictory in Europe Day\u201d by Britain, the United States and France. In Moscow it was already May 9, which became the Soviet Union\u2019s \u201cVictory \u200bDay\u201d in what Russians call the Great Patriotic \u200bWar of 1941-45.<\/p>\n

But this year\u2019s parade \u2060comes amid a wave of anxiousness in Moscow about the ultimate outcome of the conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, left swathes of Ukraine in ruins and drained Russia\u2019s $3 trillion economy, while Russia\u2019s relations with Europe are worse than at any \u200btime since the depths of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

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Balloons in the colors of the Ukrainian national flag float near the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin, Germany, May 9, 2026. REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crisis is still deepening gradually, but any sharp movement can send the economy (and not \u200bonly the economy) into \u2060a tailspin,\u201d jailed pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who has criticized the Kremlin for its conduct of the war, said in a post on Telegram.<\/p>\n

Girkin, a former Federal Security Service officer, used a naval analogy to say that Russia\u2019s leaders were more worried about being kicked out of their cabins than about a shipwreck.<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week dismissed CNN and other Western media reports that \u2060Putin\u2019s protection \u200bhad been intensified because of fears of a coup or assassination.<\/p>\n

Russian officials have dismissed reports of a \u200bcoup plot as nonsense.<\/p>\n

CNN cited an unidentified European intelligence agency as saying that Putin\u2019s former defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, was seen as a potential coup leader.<\/p>\n

Security Council Secretary Shoigu, who attended an online meeting of the Security \u200bCouncil chaired by Putin on Friday, was at the parade on Saturday, sitting beside some of Putin\u2019s most powerful officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia held its most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years on Saturday due to the threat of\u00a0attack from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[37575,912,30943,34363,329,21695,330,328,347],"class_list":{"0":"post-63774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vladimir-putin","8":"tag-military-parade","9":"tag-moscow","10":"tag-nazi-germany","11":"tag-parade","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-soviet-union","14":"tag-ukraine","15":"tag-vladimir-putin","16":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116544755809825615","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}