Eight years ago, Vladimir Putin gave the traditional Victory Day speech in Red Square in Moscow before flying to Crimea to celebrate its annexation. After rousing Russian patriotic anthems, the event ended with parts of the crowd in Sevastopol belting out “Back in the USSR”.
As the invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February, with missile and artillery strikes on Kyiv and armour surging towards the city, there were claims that President Putin would mark this year’s Victory Day in the Ukrainian capital which, it was assumed, would fall in the face of such overwhelming might.
But Kyiv remained standing and the towns outside the city, from which ferocious assaults were due to be launched, were wrested back – albeit amid horrific bloodshed and devastation – as Moscow’s forces were eventually forced to retreat across the Belarus border.
The first part of Russia’s war has been a failure. International analysts have verified with photographic evidence that at least 638 tanks; 694 infantry fighting vehicles; 345 armoured fighting vehicles; 106 self-propelled artillery systems; 26 aircraft; 41 helicopters and 9 ships have been lost in combat.
Western estimates put the number of Russian troops killed at 15,000, while the Ukrainians claim it is more than 25,000. There is an acknowledgement that two-dozen senior officers, including generals, have been killed, an amazing number for a first-world military. Russia’s defence ministry stated six weeks ago that 1,351 soldiers have been killed, but there has been no update since.
Seventy-five days after the start of the conflict, the only Ukrainian city Kremlin forces have managed to capture is Kherson, on the Black Sea. Mariupol, another port, has been under savage attack and what is left of it will probably be subjugated. But Ukrainian forces are still hanging on, surrounded, amid the debris of the Azovstal steel plant.
The final outcome of this extraordinary and astonishing war is yet to be played out in bloody strife across the Donbas, eastern Ukraine. But what has been unfolding in Ukraine is of seismic significance – a shaping of modern history commensurate with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks and their aftermaths.
Putin’s Victory Day speech in Moscow was expected to reflect this volatile situation with major announcements. There were predictions that he would order a general mobilisation of the population, or perhaps even declare war on Ukraine.
There were reports the president would declare partial victory in the east – a major step in “de-Nazification”, one of the stated aims of the Kremlin’s “special military operation”. Many of the remaining Ukrainian forces in Mariupol are members of the Azov Battalion, long portrayed by Moscow as fascists.
In the end, his address offered no pointers toward what may unfold in the conflict. Instead, he compared the fighting taking place to the Great Patriotic War when 27 million Russians gave their lives in defeating Hitler’s Germany.
Russia was under threat once again from its enemies, said the president. Action had to be taken after the US and its allies rebuffed offers of a security deal. The west was instead, he claimed, plotting to seize Crimea: Ukraine was preparing for military action in the Donbas, and talking openly about obtaining nuclear weapons.
“Nato countries did not want to listen to us. They had different plans, and we saw it. They were planning an invasion into our historic lands, including Crimea … Russia gave a preemptive rebuff to aggression, it was a forced, timely and only right decision”, he said.
This is the narrative that the Kremlin and state-backed media had laid out at home while persecuting opposition voices that questioned it. No evidence had been presented to back the claims, but a significant proportion of the Russian people appear to accept this version of events.
There was no mention of Mariupol. The civilians from the Azovstal plant have been evacuated, but around 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers remain trapped inside, 700 of them said to be wounded.
The Ukrainian soldiers have refused to lay down their arms. One officer, Lieutenant Illya Samoilenko, said: “We are witnesses of Russian crimes. Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in [sparing] our lives.”
The absence of a mention of Mariupol in Mr Putin’s speech did not lessen the dread among the families of Mariupol defenders of what may lie ahead. Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Monday afternoon that Russian troops, backed by armour and artillery, were trying to storm the Azovstal plant once again.
Yevgeni Sukharnikov, from Kyiv, whose 24-year-old son is in the plant, said: “To be honest, we wouldn’t have believed anything Putin would have said. The Russians have falsely painted the Azov as Nazis. They may have had extremist connections in the past, but they don’t any longer, they have become scapegoats.
“We are campaigning very hard for an international effort to get the soldiers out, an effort for extraction. We have written to foreign embassies asking for help. We fear they would be killed if they remain trapped, surrendering is not going to save them, that is the reality we are facing.”
In a message to Russian troops, Putin declared: “No one forgets the lessons of the Second World War. There is no place for executioners, punishers and Nazis in the world.”
In Bucha and Irpin, Makariv and Hostomel, Cherniev and Borodyanka, towns surrounding Kyiv, it was the Russians who carried out executions and sexual abuse and meted out brutal punishment.
Iryna Fedorenka had found the body of her husband Denis, arms tied behind his back, hooded and shot in the back of his head after eight days of searching in Bucha. The businessman had been taken away by Russian soldiers soon after they entered the town at the end of February, not to be seen alive again.
Ms Fedorenka had watched and listened to Mr Putin’s speech to try and understand, she said, his motivation.
“What Putin had to say was personal for many of us here in Ukraine. I thought I might hear something from Putin which would help me try to understand why the Russians behaved in this barbaric way”, she said.
“But all I heard was lies, no explanations. I don’t know why so many people were killed, I don’t know why my husband was killed, I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out”.
The Demchuk family lost their home in artillery strikes in Makariv when much of the town was destroyed as it repeatedly changed hands during fierce fighting.
Serhei and Marina Demchuk were both injured during the attack as were two of their three children. A shop they had bought at a market complex in the suburb of Bishiv was razed along with the rest of the complex.
“We have lost everything. We’ll rebuild our home, but the shop has gone and all our savings with it ”, said Mr Demchuk. “ We are very glad to be alive, but the future is going to be very tough.”
Mr Demchuk wanted to stress that neither he nor his wife were interested in politics. “I heard what Putin said and I did not understand what he was talking about. Why were we attacked? We have friends, relations in Russia. I have a cousin living in Moscow. I have worked in Moscow myself, how are we a threat to Russia? How do they justify doing what they did?”
Dmitri Kozlov was hit by shrapnel as he and his family were leaving Irpin to escape Russian bombardment. A former marine infantry colonel in the Soviet military, he found it extraordinary, he said, when the war in the Donbas started in 2014.
“It was difficult to believe that Ukrainians would end up fighting Russians, Slav against Slav. But Putin had decided by then that we were the enemy, and here we are now”, he said.
“It is nonsense for Putin to use Victory Day to say that Russia is fighting another Great Patriotic War. They were defending their country then, a lot from Ukraine died fighting the Germans including members of my family.
“Now the Russians are invading a country. Putin thought he could take over bits of Ukraine like Crimea, that was a big mistake, they have overreached. In the end they will find that what they started in Crimea will be far more costly for Russia than Ukraine.”
