The Russian holiday of Victory Day brings out patriotic displays of flags, military parades and marches by veterans' groups celebrating the country's triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945.
A huge letter Z, which has become a symbol of the Russian military, is reflected in an office building in a street in Moscow, Russia, Friday, May 6, 2022. Red Soviet flags and orange-and-black striped military ribbons are on display in Russian cities and towns. Neighborhoods are staging holiday concerts. Flowers are being laid by veterans' groups at monuments to the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known in the country.
The pride and patriotism usually associated with Russia's most important holiday, marked by a huge parade of soldiers and military hardware through Red Square, is mixing with apprehension and unease over what this year's Victory Day may bring. Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said Moscow was covertly preparing such a plan. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told LBC Radio that Putin was “laying the ground for being able to say, ‘Look, this is now a war against Nazis, and what I need is more people.
Russian state TV has ramped up the patriotic rhetoric. In announcing the Feb. 24 military operation, Putin declared it was aimed at the “demilitarization” of Ukraine to remove a perceived military threat to Russia by “neo-Nazis.” But many Russians fed a steady diet of the official narrative have cheered on their troops, comparing them to “our grandfathers” who fought the Germans.
“A significant part of the population is horrified, and even those who support the war are in a permanent psychological militant state of a perpetual nightmare,” said political analyst Andrei Kolesnikov in a recent commentary.
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