Putin says army fighting ‘aggressive’ NATO-backed force in Victory Parade address

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that his soldiers in Ukraine were fighting an “aggressive force” backed by all of NATO and described his war goals as “just,” in a combative address to the annual Victory Day parade on Red Square.

In an address to the parade, attended by Russian military units as well as soldiers from North Korea, Putin invoked the Soviet victory to rally support for his army in Ukraine.

“The great feat of the generation of victors inspires the soldiers carrying out the goals of the special military operation today,” Putin said.

“They are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc. And despite this, our heroes move forward,” he said.

“I firmly believe that our cause is just,” he added later.

Russia held its most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years on Saturday due to the threat of attack from Ukraine, where victory for Moscow’s forces has proven elusive more than four years into the deadliest European conflict since World War Two.

The May 9 parade on Red Square marks Russia’s most revered national holiday - a time to celebrate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany and to pay homage to the 27 million Soviet citizens, including many from Ukraine, who perished.

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Once used to show off Russia’s vast military, including its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, the parade this year had no tanks or other military equipment rolling over the cobbles of Red Square.

Trump wants ‘big extension’ to ceasefire

Soldiers and sailors, some of whom have served in Ukraine, marched and cheered as Putin looked on, seated beside Russian veterans in the shadow of Vladimir Lenin’s Mausoleum.

Fighter planes will fly above the towers of the Kremlin and Putin is due to make a speech before laying flowers at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

“In general, everything is as usual, except for the demonstration of military equipment,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters. After Russia and Ukraine accused each other of violating unilateral ceasefires they had each declared over recent days, US President Donald Trump announced a three-day ceasefire from Saturday to Monday that was supported by the Kremlin and Kyiv. The two sides also agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners.

“I’d like to see it stop. Russia-Ukraine - it’s the worst thing since World War Two in terms of life. Twenty-five thousand young soldiers every month. It’s crazy,” Trump told reporters in Washington. He added that he would “like to see a big extension” of the ceasefire.

There were no reports of violations of the ceasefire from either Moscow or Kyiv. Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, had warned that any attempt by Kyiv to disrupt Saturday’s event would lead to a massive missile strike on the Ukrainian capital. Moscow told foreign diplomats that they should evacuate Kyiv staff in the event of such an attack.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a tongue-in-cheek decree “allowing” Russia’s May 9 military parade to proceed and saying Ukrainian weapons would not target Red Square.

Security was tight in Moscow. Reuters pictures showed soldiers with guns atop pickup trucks and roads blocked around the center of the capital, which along with the surrounding region has a population of 22 million.

War in Ukraine haunts Russia’s parade

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Red Army eventually pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin, where Adolf Hitler killed himself and the red Soviet Victory Banner was raised over the Reichstag in May 1945.

Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender came into force at 11:01 p.m. on May 8, 1945, marked as “Victory in Europe Day” by Britain, the United States and France. In Moscow it was already May 9, which became the Soviet Union’s “Victory Day” in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45.

But this year’s parade comes amid a wave of anxiousness in Moscow about the ultimate outcome of the conflict in Ukraine.

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, left swathes of Ukraine in ruins and drained Russia’s $3 trillion economy, while Russia’s relations with Europe are worse than at any time since the depths of the Cold War.

“The crisis is still deepening gradually, but any sharp movement can send the economy (and not only the economy) into a tailspin,” jailed pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who has criticized the Kremlin for its conduct of the war, said in a post on Telegram.

Girkin, a former Federal Security Service officer, used a naval analogy to say that Russia’s leaders were more worried about being kicked out of their cabins than about a shipwreck. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week dismissed CNN and other Western media reports that Putin’s protection had been intensified because of fears of a coup or assassination. Russian officials have dismissed reports of a coup plot as nonsense.

CNN cited an unidentified European intelligence agency as saying that Putin’s former defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, was seen as a potential coup leader.

Security Council Secretary Shoigu, who attended an online meeting of the Security Council chaired by Putin on Friday, was at the parade on Saturday, sitting beside some of Putin’s most powerful officials.

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