Russia holds scaled-back Victory Day parade amid renewed calls for truce

Under the shadow of possible Ukrainian strikes, Russia staged its most stripped-down Victory Day parade in years, a stark departure from the grand military spectacles that once defined 9 May as Moscow still struggles to secure the triumph it promised in the deadliest war in Europe since World War II.

The parade on Red Square marks Russia’s most important national holiday, commemorating the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany and honoring the 27 million Soviet citizens who died in the war, including many from Ukraine.

Long used as a showcase for Russian military might, with nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles among the hardware on display, this year’s event featured no tanks or other military equipment crossing the stones of Red Square.

Instead, ranks of soldiers and sailors — some of them veterans of the fighting in Ukraine — marched past as President Vladimir Putin watched from his seat beside Russian veterans near Vladimir Lenin’s Mausoleum.

No tanks or military equipment crossed the cobbles of Red Square at this year’s parade

North Korean troops, who fought Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, also took part in the march.

Warplanes passed over the Kremlin’s towers as Mr Putin delivered an eight-minute address, vowing that Russia would prevail in the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin continues to describe as a “special military operation”.

“The great feat of the victorious generation inspires the soldiers carrying out the tasks of the special military operation today,” Mr Putin said.

“They are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc. And in spite of that, our heroes march forward.”

Vladimir Putin attended the Victory Day event in Moscow this morning

Trump wants ‘big extension’ to ceasefire

After Russia and Ukraine accused one another of breaching unilateral ceasefires announced in recent days, US President Donald Trump said a three-day truce running from Saturday to Monday had been backed by both the Kremlin and Kyiv.

The two countries also agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners.

“I’d like to see it stop. Russia-Ukraine – it’s the worst thing since World War Two in terms of life.

“Twenty-five thousand young soldiers every month. It’s crazy,” Mr Trump told reporters in Washington.

He said he would “like to see a big extension” of the ceasefire.

US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he would like to see a ‘big extension’ of the ceasefire

Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, had warned that any effort by Kyiv to disrupt the Victory Day celebrations would trigger a massive missile strike on the Ukrainian capital.

Moscow also told foreign diplomats they should withdraw staff from Kyiv in the event of such an attack.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded with a tongue-in-cheek decree “permitting” Russia’s 9 May parade to go ahead and saying Ukrainian weapons would not strike Red Square.

Security in Moscow was heavy.

Images showed armed soldiers riding atop pickup trucks and roads sealed off around the city centre in the capital and surrounding region, home to 22 million people.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that humanitarian issues remained a key priority

War in Ukraine casts a long shadow over Russia’s parade

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Red Army eventually drove German forces back to Berlin, where Adolf Hitler took his own life and the red Soviet Victory Banner was raised above the Reichstag in May 1945.

Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender took effect at 11:01pm on 8 May 1945, a date observed by Britain, the United States and France as Victory in Europe Day.

In Moscow, however, it was already 9 May — the day that became the Soviet Union’s Victory Day in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45.

Yet this year’s parade unfolded against a growing sense of unease in Moscow over how the war in Ukraine may ultimately end.

The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands, reduced large parts of Ukraine to ruins and weighed heavily on Russia’s $3 trillion economy, while relations between Moscow and Europe have sunk to their lowest point since the bleakest years of the Cold War.

Russian National Guard Service officers patrol the Red Square

“The crisis is still deepening gradually, but any sharp movement can send the economy (and not only the economy) into a tailspin,” jailed pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who has criticised the Kremlin’s handling of the war, wrote on Telegram.

Mr Girkin, a former Federal Security Service officer, used a naval metaphor to argue that Russia’s leaders were more concerned about losing their cabins than preventing a shipwreck.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected CNN and other Western media reports that security around Mr Putin had been tightened because of fears of a coup or assassination. Russian officials have dismissed talk of a coup plot as nonsense.

Only 21 years ago, Mr Putin watched the Moscow parade seated alongside US President George W Bush, France’s Jacques Chirac and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

This year, the foreign guests in attendance will include Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim and Laos President Thongloun Sisoulith.