There were no surprises during Vladimir Putin’s short speech to commemorate the 78th Victory Day in Moscow on Tuesday. Just as last year, Mr Putin drew risible parallels between the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany and his own illegal war in Ukraine. Even the brutal head of the Wagner mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has questioned this narrative, which casts Ukraine as a neo-Nazi puppet regime manipulated by a west intent on destroying Russia. But the president resolutely stuck to the usual script.
The boilerplate polemic was, however, delivered against a subtly changed backdrop. This was the most muted 9 May celebration since Mr Putin began to co-opt the anniversary for his own revanchist purposes. Fifteen months after Russia’s blitzkrieg invasion ground to a halt last February, the blood-soaked war of attrition taking place in eastern Ukraine has limited the Kremlin’s capacity to put on a show in Red Square. The parade was light on heavy military equipment, compared with previous years, and did not feature an air display. In other parts of Russia, events were cancelled altogether, with officials citing security grounds.
A day traditionally devoted to memory was thus overshadowed by present anxieties. Following the recent drone assault on the Kremlin, the attempted assassination at the weekend of a prominent ultra-nationalist, and successful acts of sabotage across the country, there is a new sense of vulnerability on Mr Putin’s home front. The provenance of these attacks is murky – Kyiv has denied responsibility for the Kremlin drones – but their combined effect has been to introduce some sense of war-related jeopardy in Russian everyday life.
The impact of this in stoking internal opposition to the war should not be overstated, given the Kremlin’s power to disseminate misinformation and repress dissent. Ostensible popular support for Mr Putin’s war has remained steady at about 75%. But for ordinary Russians, it means that simply ignoring the war in Ukraine is becoming less easy to do, especially at a time when military requirements look likely to trigger a new wave of forced mobilisation.
The fearsome rate of Russian casualties, in battles that have yielded paltry territorial gains, has been accompanied by a notably lacklustre response to a recruiting campaign for new volunteers. New legislation to prevent registered conscripts leaving Russia is generating widespread anxiety and fear among the young. The dropping from Tuesday’s parades of the march of the “immortal regiment” – in which relatives display portraits of those fallen in combat during and since the second world war – was explained in relation to security concerns. A fear that it could be used to publicly mourn those lost in Ukraine seems more plausible.
During the Putin years, Russia’s 9 May celebrations have become increasingly bombastic displays of military pride and menacing intent. This year, reality undercut the performance. Mr Putin was unable to point to any recent successes in the field. Western estimates suggest more than 20,000 Russian troops have died in Ukraine since December, and more than 80,000 have been wounded. Should Ukraine’s long-prepared counteroffensive yield significant results, further setbacks on the frontline will compound the new sense of domestic unease. Ahead of a new and crucial phase of the war, Mr Putin played the same old rhetorical tunes. As the home front becomes more volatile, amid tensions embodied by Mr Prigozhin, he may begin looking for some new ones.
