It was almost like old times, but also a sign of the new. Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day parade passed off without a hitch, rumbling and squeaking with armour, untroubled by Ukrainian drones, and watched over by foreign leaders there in a sign of support. Yet the efforts made to ensure the parade ran smoothly, the nature of the guest list, and Putin’s rhetoric all highlighted the new times.
The most recent iterations of the parade had been distinctly reduced affairs, a single Second World War vintage T-34 tank substituting for the usual phalanx of tanks, and the guests largely confined to Putin’s clients. For the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe – the Great Patriotic War in Russian parlance – and symbolically to signal Russia’s resurgence, Putin was determined to replay the old hits. After the T-34s came almost 200 other vehicles, from T-90M tanks to relatively new systems such as the TOS-2 Tosochka incendiary rocket launcher, Titan high-mobility vehicle, and Malva self-propelled guns, and also some of the drones being used in the war, from Orlan reconnaissance platforms, to Geran-2 strike models.
Volodymyr Zelensky wasn’t so foolish as to pick a fight with Beijing
Along with more than 11,000 troops were contingents from other countries, the largest of which was Chinese, parading under the gaze of Xi Jinping.
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