Putin marks Victory Day with scaled-down parade after Ukraine ceasefire

The parade passed off without incident after days of spiraling tensions between Russia and Ukraine until Trump unexpectedly announced the ceasefire late Friday

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a relatively low-key military parade Saturday to mark the World War II victory over Nazi Germany, after US President Donald Trump brokered a three-day ceasefire with Ukraine. 

The annual Victory Day celebration on Moscow’s Red Square took place without a display of heavy military equipment for the first time since 2007, though an air force fly-past was held. A contingent of North Korean soldiers joined Russian troops on the square that included drone-system forces for the first time.

 

In a speech to the assembly, Putin attempted to draw parallels between the Soviet Union’s World War II victory and his own faltering war in Ukraine that’s now in its fifth year, though he didn’t mention by name the country that had shared in the 1945 defeat of the Nazis. 

 

 

Ukraine “is armed and supported by the entire Nato bloc,” Putin said, without acknowledging that it was Russia that began the February 2022 full-scale invasion. Russians “have a common goal. Everyone makes a personal contribution to the victory,” he said.

 

Colonel General Andrey Mordvichev, the commander of Russia’s Ground Forces who took the post about a year ago, led the Red Square parade for the first time. He earlier headed Russian forces that occupied Ukraine’s Mariupol early in the invasion, and later Avdiivka in the country’s east.

 

The parade passed off without incident after days of spiralling tensions between Russia and Ukraine until Trump unexpectedly announced the ceasefire late Friday. The truce would last May 9-11, he said.

 

Russia had warned it would strike central Kyiv if Ukraine attempted to disrupt the Victory Day commemorations. The Russian Foreign Ministry even advised foreign embassies to evacuate diplomatic staff and citizens from the Ukrainian capital. 

 

The Defence Ministry in Moscow announced last week that the May 9 parade would be held without tanks, missile launchers and other military hardware amid fears of a potential Ukrainian drone attack. Cadets from military schools and youth institutions were also absent. 

 

On Monday, a drone hit a high-end residential building about 6 kilometres (4 miles) from the Kremlin, a rare attack in the capital as air defences typically intercept projectiles outside the city. On Friday, Russia faced a massive drone strike, with Ukrainian attacks spanning from southern Russia to the Urals, some 1,700 kilometres from the border. 

 

One attack damaged an administrative building at the Rostov-on-Don air traffic control centre that halted operations at airports in 13 southern Russian cities for much of the day, affecting at least 14,000 travellers. 

 

Putin announced a unilateral ceasefire for May 8–9, and the Defence Ministry said it expected Ukraine to observe the truce. 

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy instead proposed a ceasefire starting May 5-6 and to extend it if Russia halted hostilities. But the midnight deadline passed with Russia and Ukraine continuing to target each other.

 

Neither side reported any significant incidents overnight after Trump announced the truce. Moscow and Kyiv also agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners each, according to the president.

 

There have been no discussions about prolonging the ceasefire beyond May 11, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Moscow hasn’t seen comments from Trump about a possible extension and there are no plans for a new call between him and Putin, he said.

 

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Malaysian King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar were among the world leaders that Putin was expected to meet on Saturday. He also met with heads of former Soviet republics, including Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Uzbekistan leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev. 

 

Many regional capitals in Russia scaled back commemorations or cancelled them entirely this year. They include Perm, a city in the Urals about 1,500 kilometres from the border, which Ukraine only began targeting in April as the range of its drones expanded.

 

Ahead of May 9,  Russian authorities temporarily shut down mobile and, at times, fixed-line internet services in cities for what they said were security reasons. Moscow faced mobile internet outages from May 5, leading up to the end of Saturday.