Ukraine Permits Putin's 45 Minute "No Victory" Parade

What if you held a parade to display your military might but your army can't spare any tanks (cuz most of them are now scrap metal littering the fields of Ukraine) and a significant number of the parading troops are North Korean cuz so many of yours are dead or wounded. And, to avoid the embarrassment of Ukraine attacking your downgraded parade with impunity, you had to get them to agree to a ceasefire.

Awkward! JL

Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack:

Putin was was terrified to show up. For weeks leading up to the parade, he threatened and blustered to get the Ukrainians to allow him the hold the parade without attack. He ringed Moscow with an extraordinary number of anti air defense systems taken from other parts of Russia: 100 or more in the days leading up to the parade. (But) in the end, Putin called on Trump to come to his rescue, desperate as he was to get the Ukrainians not to attack. It was a hollow victory. The Russian military could spare no military equipment (and maybe Putin was afraid of it being used against him). There were hardly any foreign leaders attending. The parade revealed Putin’s deep insecurities, the lack of military equipment in Russia, the reliance Putin has on Trump to protect him, and the growing sense in Ukraine that they are  on top of events. Even with Moscow covered with the densest air defense network, the Russians were worried that they could not protect the parade from a Ukrainian attack.

Vladimir Putin has turned the annual Victory Day Parade in Red Square in Moscow into his processional highpoint of the year. The problem he faced this year, was that he was terrified to show up for the main event. It meant that for weeks leading up to the parade, he threatened and blustered to try and get the Ukrainians to allow him the hold the parade without any attack.

To try and protect himself, Putin ringed Moscow with the most extraordinary number of anti air defense systems. It is almost hard to fathom how much air defense was taken from other parts of Russia to protect Moscow. There seems to have been 100 or more different systems operational surrounding Moscow in the days leading up to the parade.

However, even with all this protection, Putin remained terrified. As the clock ticked down to the parade itself, he clearly became desperate, which is the situation existing when I wrote this summary of where things stood on Friday morning.

In the end, Putin pulled out his ace-in-the-hole and called on Donald Trump to come to his rescue. Putin must have impressed on Trump with how desperate he was to get the Ukrainians not to attack the parade and dangled the prospect of releasing 1000 Ukrainian prisoners if Trump could broker a deal. So Trump reached out to Zelensky and had to speak nicely to the Ukrainian president (something he hates to do) and basically passed on Putin’s offer. Zelensky took the deal. Here was Trump’s announcement.

I have heard some criticism of this deal, which really does not get the Ukrainian situation. The Ukrainian government had a chance to free 1000 of its soldiers who were being kept in the brutal and inhumane conditions which is par for the course for Ukrainians POWs. Putin does not care about the Russians who surrender, he wants to get them back just to send them back into combat. The Ukrainians, however, are determined to rescue as many of their imprisoned comrades as possible. It seems now that Putin might be reneging on the deal—more on that below.

So Putin was going to get his parade on May 9th, which to him should have seemed a victory of sorts. But in the end it was a hollow victory.

The parade itself was a damp squib. The Russian military could spare no military equipment (and maybe Putin was afraid of any equipment being used against him) so the parade went off without the usual displays of military might. There were hardly any foreign leaders in attendance and the pageantry was tuned down to 0.

Even the most prominent example of foreign friendship was partly humiliating. One of the few twists this year was when a contingent of North Korean troops marched through Red Square.

They were there, of course, to mark that fact that Putin needed such foreign troops to retake the parts of Kursk Oblast that the Ukrainians had seized earlier.

In the end, Putin seemed to understand the weak and humiliating nature of the “spectacle”. The parade was historically short, only 45 minutes long, and when it was over he hustled out of dodge as quickly as he could. Overall the mood was said to be anxious and depressed. Once in one of his many bunkers, he released a video address that was a combination of resentment and bile. Overall it would be hard to project an atmosphere further from “Victory” than this year’s Victory Parade.

So the parade revealed many things. Putin’s deep insecurities, the lack of available military equipment in Russia, the reliance that Putin has on Trump to protect him, and the growing sense in Ukraine that they are getting on top of events. Maybe most revealing is that, even with Moscow covered with the densest air defense network that I have ever seen, the Russians were truly worried that they could not protect the parade from a Ukrainian attack. And if they can not protect Moscow with a historic number of air defense systems in place, what can they be sure of protecting. More on this in the last story.

It was an admission that nowhere within 1500 kilometres or so of the Ukrainian border is safe these days. Putin’s behavior should have made that crystal clear to the Russian people.