Putin recycles old grievances on Victory Day as Russian army battered in Ukraine

Putin also recycled some of his other go-to grievances, blaming ‘western globalist elites’ for destroying ‘traditional values’. Photograph: SPUTNIK/Reuters

A tumultuous year of fighting has passed since Vladimir Putin last addressed Russian soldiers on Red Square in Moscow to mark the country’s victory over the Nazis.

But the Russian leader’s Victory Day message to the nation on Tuesday was nearly identical to that of last year as he cast the war in Ukraine as an existential battle against an aggressive, Russophobic and woke west.