Even in the darkest days of the pandemic in 2020 Russia didn’t cancel Victory Day, its anniversary of the end of the second world war – it was just postponed. This year, the Kremlin promises a parade on May 9 with 11,000 servicemen and women plus 62 airplanes and 15 helicopters. Eight MiG-29s will form the letter Z, the symbol adopted by supporters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For the 2022 ceremony in Moscow’s Red Square the Kremlin is desperate to have a victory from the Ukraine war to announce. Commentators suggest that the recent military reorientation towards Ukraine’s Donbas region was driven by a May 9 deadline. More worrying, some fear that if that victory proves elusive, the day might instead be used as a “fulcrum” for a wider mobilisation of forces.
But why is this anniversary such a powerful force in Russian politics? During the worst days of the second world war, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was conspicuously absent from his country’s media. The cult that had been constructed around him in the 1930s seemed to have been abandoned. But then came victory in Europe, celebrated on May 9, a day after VE Day (fighting stopped a day later in Russia). On a radio broadcast on May 9 1945 Stalin announced:
