May 9, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

One tank. Some very young soldiers. And a distinctly warped message.

The display on Red Square for May 9, for decades a moment when Russia’s staggering sacrifice in the Great Patriotic War was sombrely honored, rang hollow. In 2023, it became a backdrop for the Kremlin head’s poor decision-making.

Putin’s speech was littered with references to Russia being sinned against — to his wider narrative that the invasion and war he started in Ukraine was foisted upon him by NATO. It is odd to hear as Russia gathers to honor the millions of Soviet citizens who died fighting the Nazis. The key question will be how many in the crowd felt that dissonance too.

The substance of the parade itself was also telling. There was only one tank: a T-34, a model made 89 years ago, before Putin was even born, raising the question of why they decided to include any tanks at all.

The level of hardware on display seemed thin: understandable perhaps for a military being mauled on a wide and relentless frontline. But again, it raises the enduring bind for the Kremlin.

They keep having to prove their strength, their might, yet have little actual might left to do it with. The exercise ends up being one of revealing weakness.

No jets flew by. The Kremlin itself had — according to its own press release —  come under drone attack just days earlier. All incompatible with Putin’s unique sales point —  that under him Russia is impregnable and respected again.

In the background too lurks the real war’s progress. The constant side drama with Russia’s most prominent military figure — the Wagner mercenary head Yevgeny Prigozhin — continued to play out. He threatened to leave the key city of Bakhmut unless he got more artillery shells, then said he was definitely leaving tomorrow, then said he would stay. He chose the moment of the parade to release a statement saying in fact Russian MoD troops had abandoned positions around Bakhmut and he had been threatened with treason charges if he left. This is not a message of unity.

And secondly, Russia’s wrath appears neutered. For yet another night, a wave of drone and missile attacks was thwarted by Ukraine’s air defenses. Over the past week, lives have been lost and civilians injured by debris from destroyed drones or missiles that have got through.

But above all, Ukraine's air defense has proven potent — and Moscow less so.

It raises again the long-term question of this war: Is a weak Russia dangerous or just weak?

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia is considering the United States' request for consular access to detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Russia's state news agency Ria Novosti reported Tuesday.

RIA Novosti adds Moscow has seen only “attempts of pressure and threats from Washington on the subject.”

The US State Department has yet to comment.

Some background: Gershkovich, a US citizen, was arrested in Russia in March on espionage charges, in a sign of the Kremlin’s crackdown on foreign media news outlets since it invaded Ukraine last year.

The Wall Street Journal has vehemently denied the spying accusations against Gershkovich.

Gerschkovich is currently being held in a pre-trial detention center at the notorious Lefortovo prison in Moscow until May 29. Last month, he appeared in Moscow City Court – where he was pictured standing in a glass cage – to ask that his pre-trial detention be under house arrest rather than jail. His appeal was denied.

US State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said last month that Washington was “deeply disappointed” that Moscow had rejected their request to visit Gershkovich. 

Moscow’s initial rejection was in retaliation to Washington’s failure to provide visas to Russian journalists from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s pool when he visited the United Nations in April.

Russian President Vladimir Putin used the annual Victory Day parade to launch yet another scathing attack on the West, accusing it of holding Ukraine hostage to its anti-Russian plans. 

He also again drew comparisons, falsely, between the conflict in Ukraine and the fight against Nazi forces in World War II, saying that civilisation is at a turning point and claiming that “real war” has been unleashed against Russia. 

Throughout the short address, Putin praised Russian troops fighting in what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, saying the country is “proud” of everyone who fights on the frontlines. 

However, no mention was made of the high casualties suffered by Russian troops, which are estimated to be in the tens of thousands. 

Russia’s Victory Day parade was a more modest spectacle than in previous years, with only one tank on display.

This comes the day after CNN reported on the state of Russia’s military hardware being deployed in Ukraine.

A video, seemingly filmed in late March, showed a cargo train loaded with Soviet tanks being transported somewhere in Russia. “Wow,” a woman said, pointing her phone at the train chugs along. “This is the second train, there was one just like it before.”

Moscow has been known to bring out older military equipment from storage to help it wage war in Ukraine – but these are different.

They’re so old, you can find them in museums.

The tanks are T-55s, a model first commissioned by the Soviet Union’s Red Army in 1948, shortly after the end of World War II. Cheap, reliable, easy to use and easy to maintain, Russia used this model to quash uprisings in former Warsaw Pact countries, rolling through Hungary in 1956, then Prague, capital of what was then Czechoslovakia, in 1968.

Photographs shared by pro-Kremlin bloggers now appear to show these tanks in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.

“The Soviets never threw anything away,” historian John Delaney, a senior curator at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Cambridge, told CNN. “There’s probably a significant number of them sitting in sheds waiting to be reconfigured.”

Read the full report:

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Russia traditionally uses the Victory Day parade in Moscow to flex its military might. In previous years' parades, tens of tanks have streamed across the Red Square as jets and helicopters ripped through the skies above.

But this year's parade was a more modest event.

There was only one tank leading this year's mechanized column – the T-34, a Soviet-era vehicle fielded by Russia during World War II.

At the 2022 parade, the T-34 was accompanied by several of the more modern T-90 and T-14. Neither of these models appeared in Wednesday’s celebration. Instead, the T-34 was accompanied by a procession of multipurpose fighting vehicles – the Tigr.

Tigr-M and VPK-Ural armored vehicles were also on display, but the main focus was the country’s state of the art air defense system – the S-400 – and its intercontinental ballistic system – the Yars, which forms part of Russia’s nuclear forces.

According to state news agency TASS, 125 items of military hardware were on display.

Despite weather forecasts showing relatively clear skies above Moscow, the usual fly past above Red Square was canceled, state media reported, without providing an explanation.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday congratulated Russia on its annual Victory Day in a letter to his Russian counterpart.

According to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim's letter expressed warm greetings to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian army and people of Russia for their fight "to realize international justice and defend global peace" against so-called "imperialists."

Kim said that under Putin's leadership, Russia will "smash all challenges and threats posed by hostile forces" and prevail in its quest to ensure the country's "sovereignty, dignity and regional stability,” KCNA said. 

North Korea is one of only a handful of countries to show outright support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has blamed the United States and the West for the war.

The KCNA report made no mention of Ukraine. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin concluded his Victory Day speech Tuesday by equating the efforts of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, falsely, to Soviet forces who helped defeat the Nazis in World War II.

Putin has often invoked the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying that the offensive is aimed at "denazifying" the nation -- ignoring the fact that President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and lost relatives in the holocaust.

Some analysts say the Russian leader is committing some of the same blunders that doomed Germany’s 1941 invasion of the USSR — while using “Hitler-like tricks and tactics” to justify his brutality.

In his Victory Day speech in Red Square Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia honors the sacrifice of the allied armies of the United States, the United Kingdom and China in World War II.

Putin suggested that "experience of solidarity" could be a foundation toward building a "multipolar world."

"I am convinced that the experience of solidarity and partnership in the days of the struggle against a common threat is our heritage and a reliable base of support in our movement towards a multipolar world based on trust and indivisible security, equal opportunities for unique and free development for all nations in the world," Putin said.

Remember: Putin's remarks come just hours after Ukrainian officials said their air defenses had intercepted all but two of 25 cruise missiles fired by Russia overnight — the latest aerial barrage launched by Moscow's forces amid the Russian leader's unprovoked war against Ukraine.

No ships have been inspected for the past two days under a UN-brokered deal to facilitate vital grain exports from Ukraine, the Office of the UN Coordinator of the Black Sea Grain Initiative said Monday.

Earlier Monday, Ukrainian officials blamed Russia for effectively bringing the initiative to a halt, accusing Moscow of not registering or inspecting ships intended to go to and from Ukrainian ports.

The initiative was established in July 2022 to guarantee safe passage for ships exporting grain and oilseeds from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, much of which supports humanitarian operations in heavily-dependent countries like Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen.

The deal was last extended on March 18 for 60 days and is set to expire on May 18. Talks between the key parties have so far brought no agreement.