With his armies grinding forward in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin on Thursday marked Victory Day — the World War II commemoration that is Russia’s most significant holiday — with an unusually harsh speech, accusing the West of “hypocrisy and lies” and of inciting global conflicts, and warning that Russia’s nuclear weapons are always ready for war.
Appearing confident and confrontational at the ceremony on Red Square, two days after his inauguration for a fifth term as president, Putin accused Russia’s former allies against Nazi Germany of distorting the truth about World War II. After his speech, the traditional parade showcased Russia’s military prowess, including the Yars and Iskander-M nuclear-capable missile systems.
“Russia will do everything to prevent a global clash, but at the same time we will not allow anyone to threaten us. Our strategic forces are always in combat readiness,” Putin said, referring to the country’s nuclear capabilities. This week, Russia’s Foreign Ministry scolded the ambassadors of Britain and France over their countries’ support for Ukraine, and Putin announced plans for tactical nuclear drills.
In remarks full of bravado and bluster, Putin repeated his frequent and false accusation that Western powers are supporting modern-day Nazis by propping up the government in Kyiv. He also restated his common gripe that the West is seeking to stymie Russia’s development as a global power.
“Revanchism, mockery of history, the desire to justify the current followers of the Nazis are part of the general policy of Western elites to incite more and more regional conflicts, interethnic and interreligious enmity, and to restrain sovereign, independent centers of world development,” Putin said.
GET CAUGHT UP
Summarized stories to quickly stay informed
He asserted that the West has forgotten the lessons of World War II against Nazi Germany, and he distorted history to suggest that the Soviet Union’s fight against Germany decided “the fate of mankind” while “practically the whole of Europe was working for the military power of the Wehrmacht.”
“Today, we see how the attempts are made to distort the truth about the Second World War,” Putin said. “It disturbs those who are accustomed to building their essentially colonial policy on hypocrisy and lies.”
He continued: “They are demolishing memorials to the true fighters against Nazism, putting on pedestals the traitors and collaborators of the Nazis, crossing out the memory of the heroism and nobility of the soldier liberators, of the great sacrifice they made in the name of life.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov reinforced Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling by warning the United States and the West “that their escalatory course confronts Moscow with the need for steps to strengthen nuclear deterrence measures.”
After the parade, Putin said he met with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu; the chief of Russia’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov; and Putin’s closest military ally, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday night for intensive discussions on the Ukraine war, the Interfax news agency reported. Lukashenko said the meeting ended at 3 a.m.
The parade in Moscow included about 1,000 participants in Russia’s war on Ukraine, marching in a separate column, after Putin extolled them as heroes in his speech.
Putin, wearing a St. George’s ribbon on his lapel, arrived at Moscow’s main square under gray skies, leading a group of leaders of Central Asian and several other “friendly” countries. He shook hands with aging World War II veterans. The square was flanked by a giant red banner bearing the word “Victory!”
As a military orchestra played triumphal music, a formation of goose-stepping Russian service members carried the Russian tricolor flag and the Soviet victory banner onto the square in heavy rain, kicking off the parade.
Shoigu, standing in an open-topped limousine, was driven around the square saluting and congratulating various units, which returned the salute and yelled, “Hurrah! Hurrah Hurrah!”
Russia’s highly politicized Victory Day celebration is not just a commemoration of the massive wartime Soviet casualties in World War II, which is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, but also a bombastic celebration of Russian militarization, central to Putin’s determination to rebuild Russia as a great power with conservative, traditional values.
Recent Russian advances on the battlefield in Ukraine set the tone for the triumphant atmosphere Thursday — a stark contrast to last year when Russia was under intense pressure amid successive setbacks in the war. At the time, its forces were struggling to take the city of Bakhmut as a prize for Putin — though they managed to seize the city weeks later.
This year’s parade was marked by the resumption of the symbolically important aviation flyover for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with a display by nine Su-30SM and MiG-29 aerobatic teams and six Su-25VMs. The aircraft painted the sky in the colors of the Russian flag. In 2021, more than 50 military planes and 18 helicopters took part.
Yet the display of hardware on Red Square was modest compared with the ostentatious exhibition of the country’s most advanced equipment in prewar years. Last year, only one tank — an old World War II-era T-34 — took part in the procession. The T-14 Armata that was presented to the public during the parade in 2015 and billed by Russia as a rival to U.S. Abrams and German Leopard tanks was nowhere to be seen.
In total, 61 pieces of equipment were displayed during the parade, slightly up from last year’s event but far fewer than the nearly 200 brought to Red Square in 2021.
This year, Ukrainian forces have been forced to retreat from numerous front-line villages as supplies of weapons from Western supporters stalled. Ukraine’s electricity grid has been relentlessly bombed, part of heavy attacks on critical infrastructure that have severely damaged its economy.
The leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Laos and Guinea-Bissau were present for the parade. On Wednesday, Putin sent congratulatory messages to the leaders of numerous former Soviet states — notably excluding Ukraine, which he insists is historically part of Russia, and the Baltic states, which are now part of the European Union and NATO.
Meeting Russian commanders in the Ukraine war after the parade, Putin said Russia must continue to develop new military technology to challenge state-of-the-art Western equipment “because the entire Western community is working for our enemy, dreaming of Russia ceasing to exist in its current state.”
He said Russia’s military had adapted, meaning military operations that once were carried out by military aviation are now carried out via drones and reconnaissance. But he acknowledged the difficulties for Russian forces in Ukraine when “they are facing enemy drones buzzing above their heads like flies.”
Russia has ramped up weapons production, with factories running 24 hours a day to produce artillery shells, and plants refurbishing and cranking out older-model tanks for the front lines, rather than advanced modern tanks. Russia has been able to obtain parts from Iran, China and North Korea to drive a massive military production effort.
Putin has put Russia’s economy on a war footing and dramatically increased the military and security budgets, allowing the country to make a stunning recovery from its early losses in Ukraine.
Western delays and hiccups in military support for Ukraine, including the months-long stalling of aid in Congress, have left Ukraine with insufficient air defense systems and ammunition to protect its cities and infrastructure.
Even with new aid beginning to flow, Ukraine remains outgunned and outnumbered. Russia has taken advantage of Kyiv’s shortages to consolidate its positions and increase its military deployments through an aggressive recruitment drive.
Kyiv officials on Wednesday announced plans for electricity rationing across the country after Russia’s latest massive missile and drone strike on infrastructure.
Russia is pushing to capture the town of Chasiv Yar, seen as a strategic location on high ground that could open the way for the seizure of more territory in the Donetsk region, which Putin — in violation of international law — has declared to be annexed by Russia.
As part of the Victory Day celebrations, the Defense Ministry mounted a display of Western military equipment captured in Ukraine in an exhibition in Moscow that drew tens of thousands of people and reinforced Putin’s repeated insistence that his nation is fighting an existential war against the “collective West.”
Mary Ilyushina in Berlin and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
