Moscow is preparing for Tuesday’s Victory Day parade, the most important day in the calendar for Russia under Putin, who uses the 1945 Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany to justify his invasion of Ukraine. Russia launched its biggest swarm of drones for months against Ukraine on Monday, the eve of Russia’s May 9 holiday celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany, which Kyiv marked a day earlier in a symbolic new break with Moscow. Kyiv’s mayor said Russia had fired 60 Iranian-made kamikaze drones at Ukrainian targets, including 36 at the capital, all of which had been shot down. The Associated Press has the story:
Ukraine War overshadows Russian Victory Day
Newslooks- (AP)
Victory Day, Russia’s most important secular holiday, lauds two tenets that are central to its identity: military might and moral rectitude. But the war in Ukraine undermines both this year.
The holiday falling on Tuesday marks the 78th anniversary of Germany’s capitulation in World War II after a relentless Red Army offensive pushed German forces from Stalingrad, deep inside Russia, all the way to Berlin, about 2,200 kilometers (1,300 miles).
The Soviet Union lost at least 20 million people in the war; the suffering and valor that went into the German defeat have been touchstones ever since.
However, many regions have canceled their May 9 observances because of concerns the events could be targets for Ukrainian attacks.
The famed parade in Moscow’s Red Square will go ahead following Russia’s claim of an attempted Ukrainian drone attack on the Kremlin, whose spires loom next to the parade venue, but amid ramped-up security measures. The use of drones has been once again banned in the Russian capital, and car sharing services have been temporarily barred from the city center, with users unable to start or finish rides there.
In St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, the authorities also banned the use of drones ahead of a parade. In some parts of the city’s extensive network of rivers and canals, the use of jet skis has also been forbidden.
For all the fearsome armaments that will growl through Moscow’s most famous square, Russia’s failure to make gains in Ukraine spoils the image of its army’s indomitability.
After seizing sizable parts of the neighboring country in the opening weeks of the invasion, the Russians abandoned an attempt to enter Kyiv, retreated in parts of northern and southern Ukraine, and failed to take Bakhmut, a small city of questionable value, despite months of exceptionally gruesome fighting.
President Vladimir Putin, in his speech during the parade, is sure to praise the Red Army’s determination to wipe out Nazism and to repeat his assertion that Russia is taking the moral high ground by fighting an alleged Nazi regime in Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president.
But the missiles that rain down on Ukrainian civilian targets have drawn worldwide condemnation of Russia, while the Western countries that made common cause with Moscow to defeat Nazi Germany send billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine.
Analysts are divided on whether the May 3 drone incident at the Kremlin was a genuine attack or a “false flag” concocted to justify increasing the ferocity of Russia’s missile barrages in Ukraine. Either explanation risks undermining the sense of security among Russians already rattled by attacks, likely committed by Ukraine or by domestic opponents, that have risen sharply in recent weeks.
Two freight trains derailed this week in bomb explosions in the Bryansk region that borders Ukraine. Notably, the region’s authorities did not blame Ukraine, which could be an attempt to whitewash the Ukrainian capability to carry out sabotage.
But Bryansk authorities claimed in March that two people were shot and killed when alleged Ukrainian saboteurs penetrated the region. The region has also come under sporadic cross-border shelling, including last month, when four people were killed.
Three prominent supporters of the war in Ukraine were also killed or injured on their home turf elsewhere in Russia. A car-bombing last week in the Nizhny Novgorod region that officials blamed on Ukraine and the United States severely injured nationalist novelist Zakhar Prilepin and killed his driver.
Last year, Darya Dugina, a commentator with a nationalist TV channel, died in a car bombing outside Moscow, and authorities alleged Ukrainian intelligence was behind the April death in St. Petersburg of prominent pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed when a bomb inside a statuette he was handed at a restaurant party exploded.
Amid the heightened security worries, authorities also canceled one of Victory Day’s most notable observances, the “Immortal Regiment” processions in which throngs of citizens take to the streets holding portraits of relatives who died or served in World War II.
The processions carry an air of genuine emotion, in sharp contrast to the obedient stone-faced soldiers who march across Red Square during the tightly regimented military parades that change little from year to year.
Although the processions are moving and impressively large, authorities “thought that the risks were becoming prohibitive,” said Russian analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, now at the Free University in Riga, Latvia. “If some kind of drones fly there, penetrate through the impenetrable border … then why can’t they drop something on this column?”
Russia bans jet skis, ride-hailing ahead of WWII tributes
Newslooks- KYIV, Ukraine (AP)
Russia enacted a major security clampdown ahead of Tuesday’s annual commemorations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, curbing the use of drones and ride-sharing services in its largest cities — even jet skis on the canals of St. Petersburg — amid its 14-month war with Ukraine.
At least 21 Russian cities canceled May 9 military parades — the staple of Victory Day celebrations across Russia — for the first time in years, Russian media said.
Regional officials blamed unspecified “security concerns” or vaguely referred to “the current situation” for the restrictions and cancellations. It was not clear whether their decisions were taken in coordination with the Kremlin.
Last week, Russia — which hasn’t witnessed the carnage endured by Ukraine during the invasion — was rattled by ambiguous official reports that two Ukrainian drones flew into the heart of Moscow under the cover of darkness and reached the Kremlin before being shot down.
Media and local officials have blamed other sporadic drone attacks, especially targeting oil depots near the two countries’ border, on the Ukrainian military. Kyiv officials decline to comment on such claims.
The fears of a possible Ukrainian attack appeared real, even though parades will go ahead in Russia’s largest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg. But the use of drones has been banned in both cities ahead of Victory Day.
In St. Petersburg, often referred to as “Venice of the north” for its network of rivers and canals, using jet skis in certain parts of the city is prohibited through May 10. In the Russian capital, car sharing services have been temporarily barred from the city center — drivers will not be able to start or finish rides there – amid preparations for the traditional Red Square parade.
Initially, only one foreign leader was expected to attend this year’s Moscow parade — Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov, who arrived Monday and met Putin for talks. That was one more foreign guest than last year, when no leaders went amid Putin’s broad diplomatic isolation over the war. The Kremlin at the time said it hadn’t invited any because it wasn’t a “round-number anniversary.”
But on Monday officials announced that Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon would be joining Putin and Zhaparov at the festivities, along with Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, and Kazakhstan’s leader, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
The latter two were surprising choices for the guest list as they have in the past diverged from Putin’s line. Kazakhstan and Armenia, though Russia’s allies, have not publicly supported the war in Ukraine. In fact, Tokayev has spoken to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the phone several times throughout the invasion.
Tokayev also told Putin last summer that Kazakhstan would not recognize the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.
Armenia is a member of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization, but Pashinyan snubbed Moscow earlier this year by refusing to host the alliance’s military drills.
May 9 is normally a bank holiday in Ukraine, too, but not this year, because of the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday he had sent a draft bill to parliament proposing a Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in World War II on May 8 and a Day of Europe on May 9, further distancing Kyiv from Moscow.
Zelenskyy equated Russia’s goals in Ukraine to those of the Nazis. “Unfortunately, evil has returned,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram. “Although now it is another aggressor, the goal is the same — enslavement or destruction.”
The European Union’s Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is due to travel to Kyiv on Tuesday to mark Europe Day together with Zelenskyy.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian air defenses shot down 35 Iranian-made drones over Kyiv in Russia’s latest nighttime assault, as attacks across Ukraine by the Kremlin’s forces killed four civilians, officials said Monday.
Five people in the capital were injured by falling drone debris, according to Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration. Air raid alarms sounded for more than three hours during the night.
Drone wreckage struck a two-story apartment building in Kyiv’s western Svyatoshynskyi district, while other debris struck a car parked nearby, setting it on fire, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegram post.
Facing economic sanctions and limits on its supply chains due to its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has routinely turned to Iranian Shahed drones to bolster its firepower.
Russian shelling of 127 targets across northern, southern and eastern parts of Ukraine killed three civilians, the Ukrainian defense ministry said. Russian long-range bombers launched up to eight cruise missiles at Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, authorities said. One person was killed and three wounded.
Some of the Soviet-era cruise missiles fired against the Odesa region self-destructed or fell into the sea before reaching their targets, according to Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ihnat.
Meanwhile, Russian-installed authorities have begun evacuating residents of Tokmak, a town in the front-line southern Zaporizhzhia region, toward the Black Sea coast, Ukraine’s General Staff said.
Those working for Kremlin-appointed local authorities, as well as children and educational workers, are being relocated to Berdyansk, a Russian-occupied seaside city some 100 kilometers southeast, it said.
On Friday, the Russian-appointed governor of the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region ordered the evacuation of civilians from 18 settlements there, including Enerhodar which neighbors the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Speculation has been mounting for months about the timing and focus of Ukraine’s expected spring offensive, with some analysts saying Kyiv might try to strike south into Zaporizhzhia in order to split Russian forces and cut Moscow’s land link to occupied Crimea.
