For some Russians, Putin’s Victory Day is the darkest day of the year

Vladimir Putin is having a good week. 

After being sworn in as his country’s president for a fifth term, he was treated to a military parade on what is presumably his favorite holiday of the year. 

Thursday’s Victory Day resembled less a tribute to the Soviet Union’s costly World War II triumph over Nazi Germany — in which around 27 million Soviet citizens died — than a rehearsal for a dreamed-of future victory over Ukraine and its backers. 

In a speech on Red Square, Putin accused the West of escalation and of wanting “to forget the lessons” of World War II, while himself boasting of Russia’s nuclear prowess. 

He has some reason to be confident. As Ukraine waits for more and better weapons, Russia has regained the momentum on the battlefield. 

Exactly a year ago, warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner mercenary group, caused a huge stir by recording a video in which he spoke derisively of a “grandpa” — an often-used nickname for Putin among his opponents — who could turn out to be a “complete dickhead.”

Today, Prigozhin is dead. 

So, too, is Putin’s nemesis, opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Other critics have been silenced, forced into exile, or thrown in jail. 

Cowed into submission by a mix of propaganda and draconian laws, ordinary Russians present no challenge to his quarter-century rule.

But the unified front hailed by Putin and amplified by Russian state media is only part of the story. For a portion of Russian society, Victory Day is an excruciating annual reminder of the current war in Ukraine, which they see as tarnishing their country’s reputation and distorting its history, as well as that of their families.

“For me this is not a celebration but a day of mourning,” said Valeria, 20, whose father has been mobilized. Like others quoted in this article, she declined to give her full name, fearing repercussions for speaking out. 

“The essence of this day used to be that there should never be another war — that is what our ancestors gave their lives for. But somehow the exact opposite is happening.” 

She and a small group of similar-minded people on Thursday gathered at Moscow’s Poklonnaya Gora war memorial site on the coldest May 9 since 1945, wearing white scarves or carrying white flowers or ribbons, symbols of anti-war protest. 

Some were approached by police and asked for their documents, though no one was detained, the group said in an online post. 

“There can be no parallel between the two wars,” a young woman who identified herself as Alla, another relative of someone fighting at the front, told POLITICO. “And I cannot wait until today’s war ends, in dialogue and peace.” 

One anti-war Russian who spoke to POLITICO on the basis of anonymity said she had deliberately left town to avoid being confronted with the festivities. 

“The essence of this day used to be that there should never be another war — that is what our ancestors gave their lives for. But somehow the exact opposite is happening.” | Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images

Nikita, a 29-year-old Muscovite, confessed that before the war against Ukraine he had watched the military hardware rolling through Moscow with interest. “Back then they were like exotic creatures, now they’re murder weapons.”

Misha, who fled Russia after being served with his call-up papers in 2022 and now lives in the United States, agrees that the Ukraine war has left a stain on the commemorations. “In hindsight, you could say this kind of militarized celebration prepared the ground for this horrible war,” he said. “That’s turned this day of remembrance completely upside down.”

One tank 

Paradoxically, while imbuing Victory Day with new symbolic significance, Putin’s deployment of hardware and personnel to fight in Ukraine has limited the scale of the parade and festivities in Moscow. 

For the second year in a row, the military show included only one Soviet-era T-34 tank — alongside an intimidating array of long-range missiles. In several dozen Russian cities, Victory Day celebrations were canceled altogether.

The Immortal Regiment, the name given to mass processions of Russians carrying photos of their war-veteran relatives, has been moved online.

The official reason given is that such large gatherings are unsafe, but it also conveniently denies those directly affected by the Ukraine war the chance to be heard and seen. 

“They’re afraid we’ll draw attention to Russia’s battlefront losses,” said Valeria. “Instead, they’re just showing us another pretty picture on TV.”

Grigory Sverdlin, the head of Idite Lesom, a group that helps Russians dodge military service, said some 100 people reached out every day for psychological support or practical help — and Victory Day was no exception. 

Around a fifth of the enquiries concerned questions from Russian soldiers already mobilized who were looking for a way to desert, he said. 

“What we see is that people are tired of the war and have lost all hope, especially those who were mobilized,” Sverdlin said. “A day like today doesn’t incite a surge in patriotism, but just exhaustion and irritation.”

Stolen history

For many Russians, Victory Day is inextricably connected to their identity, said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center think tank. 

Since Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev made the day a public holiday in 1965, the nationwide annual commemoration is the “glue of the nation,” he said from Moscow. 

“Most Russians feel as if they have to unite with Putin in order to mark this important date in history.” But to a minority, “it feels like he has stolen our ancestors’ victory and the sense of historical rightness.” 

Independent Russian media on Thursday largely focused on debunking Putin’s statements or highlighting the cost of his war, with the investigative outlet Vazhnye Istorii running a story on elderly veterans who had survived World War II only to be killed in the fighting in Ukraine. 

In a message published on Telegram, opposition politician Ilya Yashin, behind bars for speaking out about Russian war crimes in Bucha, a city near Kyiv, shared a photo of his war veteran grandfather. 

“If they’d told my grandfather that Russia would be shelling Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa, that Russians and Ukrainians would be killing each other along the frontline through Donbas, he would probably not have believed it,” he wrote.

“To be honest, I still have a hard time believing it myself.”