How Ukraine rained on Putin’s parade

The Russians know how to put on a parade, and Victory Day is the showiest of the shows. It may have been a portent, though, that inclement weather conditions forced the cancellation of the aerial flypast. It quite literally might have rained on Vladimir Putin’s parade.

This shouldn’t have happened. Typically, if there is any danger that this high holy day of Putinism might see rain, then the air force seeds the offending clouds the day before to make them rain, so the sun can shine on 9 May. It usually works, until it doesn’t. Which is itself something of a metaphor for what is happening now in Russia.

There had been much over-heated speculation that Putin was going to use his speech from the top of Lenin’s Mausoleum to make some major policy announcement, whether an end to the war or the opposite, upgrading his ‘special military operation’ to a full ‘war.’