Victory Day Parade to Take Place in Russia; Here's Why it's Important for Kremlin and What to Expect

Russia will celebrate the annual Victory Day on Monday marking the victory over Nazi Germany doing the second world war in 1945.

However, the Victory Day comes as the Russia-Ukraine war enters its third month and speculations are rife about what President Vladimir Putin would say in his address.

Putin’s address to the nation on Victory Day is expected to be the most watched event in the country. Putin is expected to flaunt Russia’s military might during the symbolically important event. Huge intercontinental ballistic missiles will be towed for official review through Moscow’s Red Square, and a planned flyover will feature fighter jets in a “Z” formation showing support for the war.

Why is the Event Important This Year?

This year, the annual event has taken a significance of its own amid the Ukraine crisis. Far from liberating Europe, Russia has waged months of war against its neighbour Ukraine and is devoid of any real form of military victory that it can celebrate.

Putin seeks to justify a war that has gone on far longer — and at far higher cost — than expected. Putin has sought to legitimise the invasion by comparing it with the previous struggle against Nazism and the national pride it brought.

“Today, our soldiers, as their ancestors, are fighting side by side to liberate their native land from the Nazi filth with the confidence that, as in 1945, victory will be ours,” Putin said.

Zelensky also marked the end of the 1939-1945 war by comparing Ukraine’s battle for national survival to the region’s war of resistance against its former Nazi occupiers.

“Decades after World War II, darkness has returned to Ukraine, and it has become black and white again,” he said, in a monochrome social media video shot before a bombed-out apartment block.

Zelensky said later in his nightly video address that the school attack showed “Russia has forgotten everything that was important to the victors of World War II.”

How can I return there if the city of Mariupol doesn’t exist anymore?”

Putin Revived the Event

According to a report in BBC, the Victory Day parade was occasionally marked in the Soviet era. However, it was revived by President Boris Yeltsin for the 50th anniversary in 1995.

But Vladimir Putin made it an annual event featuring military hardware in 2008. Russian identity has been largely created with Victory Day in the background, with schoolbooks and history books focusing on Russia as Europe’s wartime liberators.

In the past, Vladimir Putin also marked Victory Day after annexing Crimea in 2014 with a speech in Red Square about defeating fascism.

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