I’ve attended many Victory Day parades on Red Square.<\/b><\/p>\n
This year’s version felt very different.<\/p>\n
In previous years I’ve had to sprint from the media bus that normally parks up by St Basils’ Cathedral, in order to nab a decent spot in the press area at the side of the square.<\/p>\n
No running was required this year. There were far fewer journalists at the event. Many international media organisations had not been granted access.<\/p>\n
Once I was in position on Red Square, a Russian TV crew came up to me and started filming.<\/p>\n
“Steve, you’re proof that foreign media have been allowed in,” beamed the reporter.<\/p>\n
“Not really,” I replied. “I can’t see any others.”<\/p>\n
I was glad to be there, though. To see for myself what Victory Parade 2026 would look like.<\/p>\n
As well as fewer journalists, there were fewer guests in the stands, and fewer world leaders had flown in for the spectacle.<\/p>\n
But the biggest difference became evident once the parade got under way.<\/p>\n
There were no tanks, no rocket launchers, no intercontinental ballistic missiles on display – none of the military hardware which the Kremlin normally showcases on Victory Day to project Russian military power on the international stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve attended many Victory Day parades on Red Square. This year’s version felt very different. In previous years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-948804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116545971096081716","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}