{"id":8934,"date":"2022-05-10T12:40:58","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T11:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=8934"},"modified":"2022-05-10T14:30:06","modified_gmt":"2022-05-10T13:30:06","slug":"putin-praises-russian-troops-on-victory-day-and-blames-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/putin-praises-russian-troops-on-victory-day-and-blames-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin praises Russian troops on Victory Day \u2013 and blames the West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr Alex Kent discusses Russia’s military spectacle and what it means for the war in Ukraine.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, Russia celebrated Victory Day \u2013 a national holiday that commemorates the surrender of Nazi Germany on 8th May 1945 (9th May in Moscow time). The highlight is a huge parade of troops and hardware through Moscow\u2019s Red Square. Held occasionally during the Soviet era, since Putin came to power it has been transformed into an annual spectacle that showcases everything from the colourful military uniforms designed in 2008 by Valentin Yudashkin to the sobering rumble of trucks carrying intercontinental ballistic missiles. Before the parade got underway, Putin addressed the thousands assembled before him \u2013 and those tuning in \u2013 perhaps to give a rare glimpse of what he might do next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although anticipated by some in the West, Putin did not use his speech<\/a> to issue a general mobilisation of Russian armed forces to secure victory in Ukraine. Indeed, Putin did not even mention Ukraine, neither did he use the words \u2018special military operation\u2019. Instead, his rhetoric drew parallels between the heroic actions of Soviet troops during the Great Patriotic War (World War II) and those of Russian service personnel who are currently fighting in the Donbass region of Ukraine. \u2018Today, you are fighting for our people in Donbass, for the security of our motherland, Russia\u2019 he asserted, \u2018so that the lessons of World War II are not forgotten, so that there is no place in history for the terrors of Nazism\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin praised the Immortal Regiment, which comprises families (including the children and grandchildren) of soldiers lost in the Great Patriotic War and more recently. \u2018As their heirs it is our duty to preserve the memory of those who defeated Nazis and who bequeathed to us to be watchful and to make sure that the global war is not repeated again\u2019 he asserted. Putin also warned that \u2018Russia shall never give up our love for our motherland, our faith and our traditional values, the customs of our forebears, and respect for all nations and cultures\u2019. He drew a contrast with the West, who he said had \u2018cancelled these thousand-year-old values\u2019, \u2018cynically falsified\u2019 the history of World War II, and had \u2018encouraged Russophobia\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Putin went beyond conflating the Nazism of the past with the present and denouncing Western powers by blaming them for actually prompting Russian intervention (in Ukraine) in the first place. He even went as far as claiming that the West were planning to invade Donbass and Crimea, and reiterated his view that Kyiv was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. To pre-empt this \u2018collision with NATO\u2019, Russia acted in a timely and necessary way, he said, as a sovereign, independent and strong nation.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin is acutely aware of the power of Victory Day (and pobedobesie<\/em> or \u2018victory cult\u2019 as some have called it<\/a>) to mobilise the emotions of the Russian people. He has used the idea of Russia\u2019s struggle against Nazism to justify war in Ukraine, since the huge military and civilian sacrifice made by the Soviet Union to help secure victory against Nazi Germany runs deep in Russian identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet there were aspects today that appeared to contrast with Putin\u2019s bullish rhetoric. Instead of proclaiming any sort of victory in Ukraine, his focus on securing the Donbass region gave a clear signal of having to scale back ambitions to meet a reduced objective. Blaming the West for creating the pretext for Russian intervention seemed like an attempt to find a broader rationale to explain the lack of progress. For a Kremlin that hides the true scale of Russian losses from its people, the combination of hearing Putin\u2019s comments with seeing fewer troops and less military equipment on show (and without the usual waves of helicopter gunships and fighter jets roaring above Red Square), this year\u2019s Victory Day may have inadvertently suggested more truth to them than myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Alex Kent is Reader in Cartography and Geographic Information Science. He lectures in geopolitics on the Geography programme within the School of Psychology and Life Sciences.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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