![]() ![]() Key guests like China’s Xi Jinping and France’s Emmanuel Macron had cancelled, downgrading the event from the showcase of global diplomacy that the Kremlin hoped the anniversary to be.īut those who made the trip were enthusiastic. Online voting for the referendum on the plan will begin in less than 24 hours and the Kremlin is hoping for a boost from the patriotic spectacle, which featured an air force flyover and soldiers dressed in the replica uniforms from the second world war. He was forced to delay the parade from 9 May by more than a month due to the coronavirus epidemic, which has upended a busy political season in Russia during which Putin is seeking to change the constitution to allow himself to stay in the Kremlin until 2036, if he so chooses. Photograph: Host Photo Agency/Getty Images Putin, who has largely appeared on television from a windowless room panned as his “bunker” since April, shook hands with war veterans and met friendly leaders from mainly ex-Soviet countries, including Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, and Uzbekistan, as well as Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.Ī Yars mobile ICBM launcher during the Victory Day military parade on the Red Square. Today’s military parade is in honour of this sacred truth, in honour of the outstanding generation of victors who determined the outcome of the entire second world war.” We must protect and defend it, pass it on to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “This is the main, pure, unaltered truth about the war. “Our debt is to remember… that the Soviet people bore the brunt of the struggle against Nazism,” Putin said in a speech, as a veteran of the war pumped his fist in the background. Last year, Putin jabbed at Western exceptionalism and what he said was the rise of neo-Nazism and Russophobia - trends he has returned to again and again when addressing the issue of Ukraine.In a speech, Putin did not mention coronavirus and delivered largely conciliatory remarks that only nodded at his sharper accusations published in English earlier this week, that the west was rewriting the history of the war. The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment on what Putin might say in his speech, to be delivered from the Red Square tribune in front of Vladimir Lenin's Mausoleum. ![]() Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed those suggestions on Wednesday, describing them as "nonsense". Moscow has told the West that its arms supplies are legitimate targets.Īhead of May 9, speculation swirled across Moscow and Western capitals that Putin was preparing some sort of special announcement on Ukraine, perhaps an outright declaration of war or even a national mobilisation. ![]() The United States and its allies have ramped up supplies of weapons to Ukraine and Putin has faced calls from some in the Russian military to unleash greater firepower on Ukraine, two sources close to the armed forces told Reuters. This year no Western leader was invited, the Kremlin said. Bush joined Putin for the May 9 celebrations in Moscow. The Kremlin has been denied a quick victory and the Russian economy - squeezed hard by sanctions - is facing the worst contraction since the years following the fall of the Soviet Union. It has also left Russia in the grip of tough Western sanctions, and has raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States - by far the world's biggest nuclear powers.Īlthough 11,000 troops marching across Red Square along with what the Defence Ministry has said will be 131 pieces of military hardware will present a grand spectacle, the Ukraine conflict has exposed weaknesses in Russia's armed forces despite Putin's attempt in his two decades in power to halt the post-Soviet decline. Russia's invasion has killed thousands of people and displaced nearly 10 million. The war in Ukraine will cast a long shadow over this Victory Day. ![]()
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