the times | Saturday April 9 2022 33
Comment
Putin has already decided his victory day
The May 9 parade marking Hitler’s defeat will celebrate the vanquishing of Ukraine, whatever the reality on the ground
In recent years, the nationally
televised event has taken on a
religious hue. Moscow Patriarch
Kirill, Russia’s senior Orthodox priest
and a fervent supporter of the war in
Ukraine, compares the holiday with
Easter, a celebration of “victory over
death and destruction”.
Nothing can be allowed to rain on
this parade, including rain: last year
the Kremlin spent 100 million
roubles (£1 million) on planes to
spray the sky with silver iodide to
empty the sky of moisture and
prevent a politically inconvenient
downpour. In 2020, the parade was
postponed due to the pandemic, but
then held in June with 14,000 troops
who had supposedly contracted the
virus already and were immune. A
year later, Russia was recording more
than 8,000 infections a day, but the
parade went ahead regardless.
This week Ukrainian military
sources reported that “among thepersonnel of the armed forces of the
Russian Federation, propaganda
work is constantly being carried out,
which imposes the idea that the war
must be completed before the 9th of
May”. Russian troops expect to be
heading home for the holiday; if they
are not, the impact on fraying
morale may be dramatic.
There are few real watershed
moments in history, but Victory Day
2022 will be one. What will Putin’s
forces truly have achieved by then?
How hollow or real will be his claims
to victory? Who, apart from
Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus,
will join him on the podium? The
Chinese? The Indians? How much
brazen propaganda, official
exhortation and manipulation will it
take to prop up the parade?
What was envisaged as a
triumphal march through Moscow is
now a high-stakes gamble. Victory
Day is immovable. Putin has set
himself a firm deadline. But wars are
notoriously unpunctual: they may
start on a date decided by man, but
they never end on time.GETTY IMAGESconcerts, laid flowers on monuments
to fallen heroes, and ate the
traditional “battlefield lunch” of
buckwheat and canned meat.
And as the parades have grown in
size and significance under Putin, so
has his rhetoric. During the 2005
parade, a period of comparative
warmth towards the West, he told
the 50 assembled foreign leaders:
“We never divide the victory into
ours and theirs, and we’ll always
remember the help of the Allies —
the United States, Great Britain,
France, and other countries of the
anti-Hitler coalition.”
By 2015, though, the parade had
become a focus for international
tensions: the leaders of China and
India attended Victory Day, but
western leaders boycotted the event
after Russia’s military intervention
in Ukraine. Six years later, in a
speech to 12,000 massed troops,
Putin’s tone had altered completely.
Britain, the US and the other
wartime allies were not mentioned.
The Soviet Union had won the war
on its own. “Our people were alone,
alone on the toilsome, heroic and
sacrificial path to victory.”Day was celebrated as a national
holiday, an opportunity to display
military hardware, international clout,
ideological conformity and patriotic
pride. From a grandstand in front of
Lenin’s mausoleum, the president and
chief of the armed forces addressed
his troops, flanked by political
bigwigs and the highly polished top
brass. Bands played, flags waved,
guns, tanks and nuclear weapons
rolled past St Basil’s Cathedral;
aircraft zoomed overhead in
formation and the memory of Soviet
sacrifice in the Great Patriotic War
was evoked in a sacred annual ritual.
The victory parade temporarily fell
into abeyance with the fall of
communism. Mass Soviet-style
demonstrations seemed
anachronistic in the new Russia. But
Putin revived the tradition, seizing
an opportunity to promote Russia’s
might and ambition, and his own
nationalist version of history.
Millions were encouraged to
march with portraits of their
forefathers who had fought in a war
that claimed 27 million Soviet lives.
Schoolchildren wore replica Second
World War uniforms, performed inT
he war in Ukraine will end
on May 9. Not in the eyes
of the world, and almost
certainly not in reality. The
fighting will continue for
months, if not years. But on that day,
Vladimir Putin will declare victory
and stage a mighty parade to
celebrate the fulfilment of his
“special operation” — the subduing
of the Donbas region, the
establishment of republics in
Luhansk and Donetsk within the
Russian Federation, a secure land
corridor between Crimea and Russia,
the “denazification” and
“demilitarisation” of Ukraine, or
some combination of the above.
It may be that he has achieved
none of these objectives in a month’s
time, but on that day Putin will tell
the Russian people he, and they,
have won. He planned to do this
even before the invasion was
launched, and now has no choice.
For May 9 is Victory Day in
Russia, the most significant date in
the nation’s political-military
calendar, the anniversary of the
Soviet Union’s triumph over
Germany in the Second World War,
and traditionally the occasion for a
massive pageant of military muscle
through Moscow’s Red Square. This
is a moment of supreme symbolic
significance for Putin, his misguided
people, and the course of the war.
But Putin’s invasion has not gone
to schedule, and by boxing himself
into a tight timetable he has created
a problem for his armies and his
status. If he makes extravagant and
easily disprovable victory claims, this
could penetrate even the thick
armour of Russian propaganda,
undermining his credibility. If he
pegs victory to specific attained
objectives, that leaves no leeway to
retreat or regroup without admitting
defeat. Anniversaries are useful
political weapons, but hard to deploy
in an unpredictable war.
Nazi Germany signed the
Instrument of Surrender in Berlin on
May 8, 1945, after midnight in
Moscow. Victory was announced
across the Soviet Union on May 9.
Six weeks later Russia staged the
largest and longest military parade in
its history: 40,000 Red Army soldiers
and 1,850 military vehicles paraded
through Red Square, cheered on by
mass crowds.
Throughout the Soviet era, VictoryRussian servicemen march through Red Square during last year’s May 9 parade, watched by President Putin, belowIf troops aren’t heading
home for the holiday,
morale will fray further
Ben
Macintyre@benmacintyre1
simply “watching badgers”. Which, it
turns out, is the second-best political
excuse involving badgers (10 per cent).- After a picture shows Jeremy
Corbyn at a wreath-laying for the
group behind the Munich Olympic
massacre, he explains he was “present
but not involved”. Which is now
Johnson’s party defence (11 per cent). - In 2014 Nigel Farage is late
for a Ukip event, claiming “open
door immigration” means that
“the M4 is not as navigable as
it used to be” (11.5 per cent). - Dominic Cummings at the
trestle table of shame in the
No 10 garden, claiming he
“agreed to go for a short
drive” to Barnard Castle to
test his eyesight. Perhaps he
should have tested it sooner
to see who was the best person
to put in No 10 (13.5 per cent). - As Kabul fell to the
Taliban, Dominic Raab, then foreign
secretary, was on holiday. But
working hard, and definitely not
paddleboarding. He couldn’t have
been, he later protested, because “the
sea was actually closed”. Like he’s
Moses (14 per cent).- As environment secretary in 2013,
Owen Paterson went from dealing
with the horsemeat scandal (what do
you put on your burger? £10 either
way) to the news that the badger cull
was not going according to plan.
Tweaking the rules, he was accused
of moving the goalposts. “No,”
Paterson insisted. “The badgers have
moved the goalposts.” (17 per cent).
Then this week Kwasi Kwarteng
explains away the chancellor’s wife’s
tax affairs, saying non-doms have been
“British law for 200 years”, like we
should bring back putting children up
chimneys. But nobody would suggest
rerunning a referendum, would they?
At last, the
definitive list
of the greatest
ever excuses
dreamt up
by MPs
‘I
t is better to offer no excuse
than a bad one.” Most
politicians ignore the wisdom
of George Washington but that
might be because they think
he is the one who designs clothes for
Asda. During my recent stand-up
tour I held a referendum on the
greatest political excuse. Here are
the results, in reverse order:
- In 2015, David Cameron starts a
speech as an Aston Villa fan, but
ends it: “I’d rather you supported
West Ham.” Explaining his claret and
blue confusion, he says: “I must have
been overcome by something” (0.89
per cent of the vote). - Then Green Party leader
Natalie Bennett justifies her
spending pledges not adding up: “I
have got a huge cold.” So she could
be prime minister but not if she had
the sniffles (0.9 per cent). - A late entry coming up from the
rear, Matt Hancock joined the poll
after choosing the week of WWIII to
explain his own unlawful incursions.
He broke social distancing “because
I fell in love with somebody”. Which
is hard to stomach on several levels
(3 per cent).- Tory minister Conor Burns
explains away the PM’s cabinet room
birthday party: “He was, in a sense,
ambushed with a cake.” The next day
Burns insisted there was no cake.
Johnson was ambushed with
Schrödinger’s cake (7 per cent). - As the net closes in on the No 10
partygoers, Johnson’s best excuse
remains: “Nobody told me.” The
wine, the cheese, the ghetto blaster
balanced on the photocopier. How
could he have known? (10 per cent.) - Former Labour Welsh secretary
Ron Davies emerges from woods
known to be used by men looking for
sex with strangers. He says he was
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