Russia’s conventional parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II will happen subsequent week with out tanks, missiles and different navy gear, the Russian Defence Ministry mentioned in a press release.
It would be the first time in almost 20 years – and in Russia’s 4-year-old struggle in Ukraine – that no navy gear will rumble by Moscow’s Red Square on May 9, the day Russia celebrates its most vital secular vacation. The Kremlin has used it to showcase its navy would possibly and world clout, and it’s a supply of patriotic pleasure.
Victory Day parades on Red Square have concerned navy gear and varied weaponry yearly since 2008. Smaller parades are held elsewhere throughout the nation, together with in cities like St. Petersburg.
The ministry cited the “current operational situation” as a cause for excluding navy gear, in addition to cadets, from this 12 months’s parade on the 81st anniversary of the victory. Ukraine has launched drone assaults deep inside Russia to counter Moscow’s greater than 4-year-old invasion.
While the ministry didn’t elaborate, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday blamed Ukraine, accusing it of “terrorist exercise”, in an apparent reference to the drone strikes. In recent months, attacks have reached locations deep inside Russia, like the Baltic port of Ust-Luga to the north of Moscow, the Samara region near the border with Kazakhstan, and the Perm region in the Ural mountains.
“All measures are being taken to minimise the danger,” he told reporters.
The parade will feature “servicemen from higher military educational institutions of all kinds and certain service branches of the Russian Armed Forces” and a traditional military aircraft flyover, the ministry said.
World War II remains a rare point of consensus in the nation’s divisive history under Communist rule, and the Kremlin has leveraged that sentiment to encourage national pride and underline Russia’s position as a global power.
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in what it calls the Great Patriotic War in 1941-45, an enormous sacrifice that left a deep scar in the national psyche.
President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia for over 25 years, has turned Victory Day into a key pillar of his tenure and has tried to use it to justify the war in Ukraine.
“Traditionally, the parade of tanks, missile systems and other military hardware across Red Square has been central to these celebrations, providing powerful optics and reinforcing Russia’s image as the heir to Soviet victory in World War II,” mentioned Natia Seskuria, affiliate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute.
“Removing this important element weakens the propaganda value of the event, particularly for domestic audiences, as it reduces one of the most visible symbols of Russian power and military prestige,” she told The Associated Press.
Security concerns are the most likely explanation, Seskuria said.
But there also could be practical military considerations, “together with the necessity to protect gear, keep away from highlighting battlefield losses, and scale back the publicity of priceless navy property”, she said,
“This choice indicators a level of vulnerability moderately than energy, as a result of even final 12 months, Russia demonstrated a spread of latest tanks and drones in entrance of invited world leaders,” Seskuria added.
Last 12 months’s parade on the eightieth anniversary was the most important since Russia despatched troops into Ukraine, and drew essentially the most world leaders to Moscow in a decade, together with high-profile friends like Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico.
Fico will attend this 12 months, too, together with different overseas dignitaries, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov mentioned Wednesday.
It featured over 11,500 troops and greater than 180 navy automobiles, together with tanks, armored infantry automobiles and artillery used on the battlefield in Ukraine, in addition to enormous Yars nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles in addition to drones carried on navy vehicles. Fighter jets flew over Red Square, too.
Read extra‘All of Russia’ helps struggle in Ukraine, Putin says at ‘Victory Day’ parade
Putin had declared a unilateral 72-hour ceasefire beginning May 7, 2025, and authorities blocked cellphone web in Moscow for a number of days to avert Ukrainian drone assaults.
In 2023, the parade was scaled down, with fewer troops and navy gear on show and no flyover.
In the Soviet period, the primary Red Square parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany came about on June 24, 1945. Then it was held on May 9 a number of occasions after that, with the final Soviet-era parade going down in 1990.
After the USSR collapsed, the parades resumed in 1995. That 12 months, troops and veterans marched by Red Square, and a separate parade of navy gear came about on the sprawling Poklonnaya Gora World War II memorial. After that, parades had been held yearly. In 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, authorities moved the parade to a later date, and it was held on June 24.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260429-russia-will-not-display-military-equipment-at-victory-day-parade-due-to-ukraine-threat