Putin’s shrinking Victory Day parade reveals his increased paranoia

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Russia’s Victory Day parade on Saturday – an annual event to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany – is expected to be a rainy affair. But while Moscow authorities can resort to cloud seeding to ensure clear skies, there will be no disguising the darkening mood across the country, as Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine grinds on.

For the past 18 months – and indeed much longer – Putin has indicated that his advancing forces are on the cusp of defeating Ukraine’s army. This has clearly not happened.

Despite a winter of devastating attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, Russia’s strategy to defeat Ukraine by sapping the will of its population has not worked.

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Meanwhile, a key milestone in the long conflict has now passed: On 13 January, 2026, the war against Ukraine officially outlasted the fighting between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

This makes this year’s celebrations particularly uncomfortable for Putin and his allies, who have tapped into the memory of the defeat of Nazism to build public support for the war. The goal of Ukraine’s “de-Nazification” has been central to the propaganda effort to convince Russians that they are fighting the same war as their forebears.

There is no denying the propaganda has worked. According to the latest data from Levada Centre, a respected polling organisation still operating in Russia, 72 per cent of Russians still support the war (40 per cent are strongly supportive). This is down from a peak of 80 per cent in 2022.

Yet authorities are nervous. The Kremlin has admitted that its decision to scale back this year’s parade and not feature the usual columns of military equipment is due to the “terrorist threat” posed by the “Kyiv regime”.

Ukraine has had considerable success in recent weeks in striking deep into Russian territory. It has hit oil terminals, refineries and Russia’s main missile plant at Votkinsk, 750 miles east of Moscow.

Even in central Moscow, authorities are not confident they can deter a Ukrainian air attack. As a result, mobile internet will be completely disabled inside Moscow’s ring road on the day of the parade.

Russian Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers roll on Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024. Russia celebrates the 79th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP) (Photo by ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images)
The Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers at the Victory Day parade in Moscow in 2024. This year’s march will see a curtailed show-and-tell of such weapons due to the threat of Ukrainian attack (Photo: Alexander Nemenov/AFP)

Authorities clearly fear that Ukraine can use mobile signals to guide weapons to their targets, as it showed in June last year when it destroyed a large part of Putin’s strategic bomber fleet located far inside Russia.

Patriotic Russian bloggers, an increasingly important constituency closely watched by the Kremlin, is split on the issue. Some have expressed understanding for the need to protect the Victory Day parade and that military equipment is more useful on the front than on Red Square.

But others have used the opportunity to criticise military leadership over the war and call for change. Some have even thanked Putin “for an empty parade and the opportunity to listen to Soviet war songs on the radio”.

Putin has also shown himself to be fearful of allowing “Immortal Regiment” marches to take place.

These events became an important part of Victory Day celebrations after 2015. Participants walked in procession holding portraits of military relatives who died during the Second World War. But in 2022, the marches provided an outlet for quiet messages of opposition to the current war, and since then Immortal Regiment participants have only been able to gather online.

Heavy losses incurred in the fighting have only increased the possibility that marches could take on a character that Russian authorities can’t control.

For Ukraine, these signs of vulnerability are encouraging, and its goal of undermining trust in Putin’s leadership by forcing Russians to question the war might be starting to work.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA - MAY 07: A tourist walks in front of the Triumphal Arch of Moscow on May 7, 2026 in Moscow, Russia. May 9, 2026 marks the 81st anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. (Photo by Tian Bing/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)
Preparations for the Victory Day parade at Moscow’s Triumphal Arch. Public reaction to this year’s scaled-down activities has been mixed (Photo: Tian Bing/Getty)

Putin’s overall approval rating has fallen from 87 per cent in August 2025 to 79 per cent in April, as more Russians sense there is no quick end to the war and amid increasing signs of economic deterioration. The sharp rise in the price of oil, linked to the US-Israeli war with Iran, will bring only temporary relief.

At the same time, an unfolding environmental disaster on the Black Sea coast after Ukraine’s repeated strikes on the refinery at Tuapse is causing outrage at local level and has highlighted once again that Putin often disappears at critical moments.

The Ukraine conflict is taking place in an ever-changing international context. Donald Trump is now distracted by the Middle East and has anyway shown himself unable to force Ukraine into a peace settlement skewed in Russia’s favour, as Putin had hoped.

Europeans are waking up to the fact that to deter future Russian aggression they must urgently integrate Ukraine into their defence planning. This would fatally undermine Putin’s goal of demilitarising Ukraine and making it a vassal state.

As a reduced number of soldiers, tanks and missiles take to the streets of Moscow this weekend, it will be increasingly clear that these are hardly times for victory celebration in Putin’s Russia.

John Lough is head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre and was the first Nato official to be based in Moscow

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