Putin Enlists Russian Pride for War in Ukraine During Moscow Parade

It was a Russian war spectacle designed to instill pride at home, impress allies and intimidate foes.

The military parade on Friday in Moscow marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany was Russia’s most expansive celebration of the holiday in years, and it achieved at least the first two goals.

More than 180 pieces of military hardware rumbled across Red Square’s cobblestones on a chilly but sunny morning, including some of Russia’s latest artillery systems, drones and armored vehicles used in its invasion of Ukraine. More than 11,500 service members in elaborate uniforms shouted, “Hurrah!” as they marched past the Kremlin’s walls. And a formation of bomber jets exuded exhaust that painted the sky above the onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral in the red, white and blue of the Russian flag.

“This is very impressive — you should be proud,” Badr Abdelatty, Egypt’s foreign minister, told me as he walked from the spectator stand.

A part of me was.

I was born in Siberia in the final years of the Soviet Union and was raised watching classic Soviet movies about World War II and attending the much more humble Victory Day parades in my hometown, where I earned my first pocket money collecting empty beer bottles on the street. The Soviet defeat of the Nazis has been Russia’s core nation-building myth since it emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.