War in Ukraine rains on Putin’s Victory Day parade

It may be having trouble on the battlefield, but the Russian army does know how to stage a parade. Behind the goose-stepping ranks, massed bands, and rumbling missile launchers, though, was a clear sense of the practical and political costs of the war in Ukraine.

Although parades from Crimea in the south to Pskov in the north had been cancelled on reasons of security, there was no way Vladimir Putin could let this one not run – even Covid had not accomplished that. The Senate’s golden dome had been repaired after last week’s drone attack – and anti-drone guns were very much in evidence among the security team – and the sky was a requisite blue (if need be, the air force seed clouds to make them rain the day before, to ensure the appropriate backdrop).

The event followed the familiar routines, from the ritual passage of the scarlet ‘Victory banner’ – descendant of the one waved over the Reichstag in 1945 – from one end of Red Square to the next, through the ‘Ura’ cheers from the assembled troops, to Putin’s speech.