LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin will send a warning to the West’s “ultimate court” as he leads Monday’s celebrations marking the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, waving Russia’s vast firepower as its forces are fighting in Ukraine.
Faced with deep Western isolation since ordering an invasion of Russia’s neighbor, Putin will speak in Red Square ahead of a parade of troops, tanks, missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
A flight over St. Basil’s Cathedral will include supersonic fighters, Tu-160 strategic bombers and, for the first time since 2010, the Il-80 Doomsday command aircraft, which will transport Russia’s top staff in the event of a nuclear war. Ministry of Defense.
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In this scenario, the IL-80 is designed to become a roaming command center for the Russian president. It is full of technology, but specific details are a Russian state secret.
The 69-year-old Kremlin leader repeatedly likened the war in Ukraine to the challenge to the Soviet Union when Adolf Hitler’s Nazis invaded in 1941.
“Trying to appease the aggressor on the eve of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be a mistake that cost our people dearly,” Putin said on February 24 when announcing what he called a special military operation in Ukraine.
“We will not make such a mistake a second time, we have no right.”
Putin sees the war in Ukraine as a battle to protect Russian-speakers there from Nazi persecution and to protect what he calls the US threat to Russia posed by NATO enlargement. Ukraine and the West reject the claim of fascism as nonsense and say Putin is waging an unprovoked aggressive war.
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people during World War II, more than any other country, and Putin has criticized in recent years what Moscow sees as attempts by the West to revise the history of the war to downplay the Soviet victory.
Apart from the defeat of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812, the defeat of Nazi Germany was the most revered military triumph of the Russians, although both catastrophic invasions from the West left Russia deeply sensitive to its borders.
The war in Ukraine will cast a long shadow over this day of victory.
The Russian invasion killed thousands and displaced nearly 10 million. He also left Russia in the grip of harsh Western sanctions and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States, the world’s largest nuclear power.
Although 11,000 troops marching through Red Square, along with what the Defense Ministry said 131 military equipment would be a spectacular spectacle, the conflict in Ukraine revealed weaknesses in Russia’s armed forces despite Putin’s attempts in two decades in power to stop the post-Soviet decline.
The Kremlin was denied a quick victory, and Russia’s economy – heavily pressured by sanctions – is facing its worst contraction in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Less than two decades ago, US President George W. Bush joined Putin for the May 9 celebrations in Moscow. A Western leader was not invited this year, the Kremlin said.
The United States and its allies have increased arms supplies to Ukraine, and Putin has faced calls from some in the Russian military to unleash more firepower against Ukraine, two sources close to the armed forces told Reuters. Moscow has told the West that its arms supplies are legitimate targets.
Before May 9, there was speculation in Moscow and Western capitals that Putin was preparing a special statement on Ukraine, perhaps a direct declaration of war or even national mobilization.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the proposals on Wednesday, describing them as “nonsense”.
The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment on what Putin could say in his speech, which will be delivered from the rostrum of Red Square in front of the Mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin.
Last year, Putin spotted Western exclusivity, and what he said was the rise of neo-Nazism and Russophobia, trends he returns to again and again when considering Ukraine.
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Report by Guy Falkonbridge Edited by Francis Carey
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