Putin's 'victory' celebration turns into a fiasco

With the abortion wars, primary elections and other big domestic events, the war in Ukraine has not dominated the news in America as much as it had in preceding weeks. But it’s still worth noting the fiasco that May 9, the day of Russia’s traditional celebration of the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany, has turned out to be for the Kremlin. Instead of a symbol of a glorious new victory, it has become a symbol of crushing failure.

The holiday was widely expected to be a big moment in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Many predicted a major Russian victory parade in Mariupol, a southern port city enduring a long siege. When it became clear that the Kremlin’s “special operation” was not going particularly well, there was speculation that May 9 would be Vladimir Putin’s chance to openly declare war and announce a general mobilization — or even limited nuclear strikes. An escalation of saber-rattling on Russian television seemed to point in that direction.

Instead, the big day was a big bust.

The “parade” in Mariupol — a ruined city which still has not fully surrendered to Russian forces because a group of fighters are making an already-legendary last stand inside a Soviet-era steel plant — was a pathetic affair. The marchers, who seemed to number a few dozen, lugged an enormous ribbon the colors of the Russian flag, apparently meant to make up for the lack of wide columns of people. The onlookers looked glum. Similar scenes were repeated in several occupied Ukrainian towns.

In Moscow, the parade was scaled down from its usual size, without the expected “Z” formation to celebrate the symbol of the “special operation.” Nor did the “doomsday plane” specially built to protect the country’s top leadership in case of nuclear attack make the predicted flyover appearance as a scary message to the West.

Instead, a wan, weary-looking Putin took the podium and recycled the standard justifications for the invasion as a “preemptive strike” against a buildup of NATO forces and a planned Ukrainian “invasion” of separatist-held areas. There were swipes at Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” and their American sponsors, as well as gripes about American exceptionalism.

The momentum belonged, once again, to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had no parade to command but posted a powerful video affirming Ukraine’s own World War II legacy and condemning Putin as a “madman … who is repeating the horrific crimes of Hitler’s regime today.” He ended by predicting that “very soon there will be two Victory Days in Ukraine. And someone will not have even one left.”

Whatever one thinks of the Hitler comparison, Russia’s legacy of victory over Nazism — already complicated by the fact that it was won by the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state with its own record of crimes against humanity — is irrevocably tainted by its current embrace of hate and war madness. Russian blogger Aleksandr Skobov notes that his country’s traditional “Never again” rhetoric about World War II’s horrific toll has given way to the trendy bravado-filled slogan, “We can do it again.”

But what Russia is doing today is attacking, not defending itself — and its true heroes are resisters such as Nadezhda Saifutdinova, a Yekaterinburg activist arrested on Victory Day for holding a placard that paraphrased George Orwell’s 1984: “War is not peace! Slavery is not freedom! Ignorance is not strength!” A country that criminalizes such words is on the wrong side of its war.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.