Russian troops in medal-adorned uniforms paraded new tanks and deadly missiles in Red Square yesterday almost 300 miles from the death and depravity of war in Ukraine.
Even as President Vladimir Putin marked Russia ’s proud World War II Victory Day celebrations, Ukrainians were desperately battling his forces’ brutal 75 days-long invasion.
The rising death toll on Russia’s troops was obvious, according to sources, with ranks bolstered by police, female soldiers, railway troops and even Moscow’s spooks in uniform.
Over the border devastating civilian tragedy and suffering marks the Ukraine invasion - in stark contrast to Russia’s attempt at a proud remembrance of its sacrifice fighting Nazi Germany.
Rotting dead bodies and other debris of horrific fighting have been swept aside across south and east Ukraine as Moscow’s commanders cleared the way for their Victory Day pomp.
In grisly contrast to Moscow’s gleaming tanks in Red Square Ukraine’s north, east and south is littered with 1,200 burnt-out, blackened and bombed out armoured vehicles.
Each one is horrific evidence of a brutal end suffered by the Russian crews that once manned them as they tried without success to overwhelm Ukrainian defence positions.
A staggering 26,650 Russian troops have died in almost three months of fighting, many of whose families still are not aware of what has happened to their loved ones.
Well over 100 Russian warplanes have been shot down since the February 24, perhaps accounting for the lack of a huge and victorious fly-past over Moscow.
The parades were slammed by Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry who said: “The World today sees very well who is marching through Red Square and what the real essence of the Russian Army is.”
It went on bitterly: “Russian soldiers are war criminals who have no idea of honour.
“They rape an barbarically kill women and men, children, the elderly and even pets.”
UK defence secretary Ben Wallace accused Russian forces in Ukraine of “mirroring the facism and tyranny” they fought more than 70 years across their country and into Germany.
And he called for the Russia’s senior generals who have acted out Putin’s wishes to attack Ukraine to face a court martial.
Even as Putin addressed the sombre Moscow parade of just 9,000 troops and their vehicles of war, fellow Russian families were coming to terms with the losses.
Last year 14,000 Russian troops took part in the parade, along with 160 pieces of military equipment including tanks, which went on for two hours.
British Russia expert Bruce Jones told the Daily Mirror: “Russia has struggled to fill its ranks this as is seen by the number and categories of personnel in the parade.
“This is as a result of the losses the Russian armed forces are suffering.
“This was a less lengthy parade and the lack of a large fly-past was noticeable because although it was blamed on poor weather, it was a bright day.”
Putin told his troops Russia’s war against democratic Ukraine was to rid the region of “Nazi filth” whilst in Ukraine war-crimes investigators are picking over the evidence of Russian troops’ Nazi-like atrocities- more than 9,000 noted already.
But Putin claimed: “The death of every soldier is painful to us. The state will do everything to take care of these families.”
Small comfort to the family of the dead Russian soldier who just weeks ago during an assignment, we found lying by the side of the road north of Kyiv.
This young man had bagged up and dumped in a field after medics had failed to save him, surgical gloves lying by his side.
His story is repeated throughout Ukraine’s killing fields where many Russian soldiers have been left behind by fleeing colleagues.
Putin addressed his troops, lamely adding: “You are fighting for your Motherland, its future. For Russia, For Victory, Hurrah.”
Many of his troops killed by Ukraine’s defending army were lied to, told they were “going on exercise” and emerged in Ukraine unaware they were already at war.
Putin’s hijacking of Russia’s proud memorial of the 27 million his country lost in the Second World War is sickeningly contrasted to the blood and misery his troops are spilling in Ukraine.
And no mention of the war-crimes they are now being investigated for, the rapes, murder, torture and industrial horror they have deployed against innocent Ukrainian civilians.
The huge pits filled with the bodies of elderly men, women and even children, hurriedly piled into mass graves by relatives given half an hour at gunpoint to bury them.
In Bucha, north west of Kyiv we saw bodies being exhumed from a pit of around 100 corpses - men and women of all ages, many shot dead in the street the piled on top of each other.
Further north we met an elderly man who wept uncontrollably as he described sheltering in a school basement with women, children and dead bodies.
Another man, aged 77, told us how he begged an angry 20 year-old Russian soldier with “dead eyes” to stop beating him in the street, leaving him with a limp.
His cries of: “I could be your father, your grandfather - why are you doing this to me,” falling on deaf ears as the beating continued.
And we met the son-in-law of 77 year-old disabled grandmother Svetlana Mykolayivna who was shot dead in her home by Russian troops.
Andrei, 52, said: “She just put her light on as she heard a noise. They shot her dead.”
Still, Putin blamed Moscow's invasion of Ukraine on western policies, claiming it was necessary to ward off potential aggression.
He even brazenly drew parallels between the Red Army's fighting against the Nazi troops and the Russian forces' action in Ukraine.
Addressing Russian troops filling Red Square, Mr Putin said the invasion was needed to avert "a threat that was absolutely unacceptable to us.”
He said: "The danger was rising by the day," he claimed, adding "Russia has given a pre-emptive response to an aggression" in a "forced, timely and the only correct decision by a sovereign, powerful and independent country".
The Victory Day that Russia marks on May 9 is the country's most important holiday, celebrated with military parades and fireworks across the county.
Some in Ukraine and the West expected Mr Putin to use his speech at the parade to switch from calling the attack on Ukraine a "special military operation" to acknowledging it as a war.
But he failed to make any shift in rhetoric or give any indication that the Kremlin may change its strategy and declare a broad mobilisation to beef up its ranks.
The Kremlin has focussed on Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas, where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukraine since 2014.
Russia has re-armed and re-supplied its forces withdrawn from areas near Kyiv and other regions in Ukraine's north-east and moved them to Donbas.
