It would be fascinating to know how far ahead Vladimir Putin of Russia was thinking when he ordered his legions across Ukraine’s borders in February 2022. If he gave much thought to the general picture around the 2026 observances of Victory Day – the Russian holiday that commemorates the Nazi surrender in 1945 that takes place on Saturday – he might well have imagined Russia’s flag flying over Kyiv, Odesa and even Moldova, the sputtering remnants of Free Ukraine confined to a few western oblasts around Lviv. Perhaps, he thought, he might send a sarcastic postcard to whichever Siberian penal colony now confined that impertinent comedian Volodymyr Zelensky.
Unless Putin proves to have been a surprisingly assiduous diarist, we will never find out. We can, however, be certain that he did not anticipate the present circumstances that this year’s Victory Day build-up has brought into sharp focus. Zelensky, Putin’s nemesis, is not only still in office but conceivably Earth’s most admired individual. Earlier this week he also skipped down the steps of his official jet to attend a European Political Community summit in Yerevan, capital of Armenia – both a former Soviet republic and a country the Putin of 2022 would have assumed was intractably in Russia’s orbit.
On the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia has incurred – by Ukrainian estimations – around 1.3 million casualties. Though Ukraine has also suffered dreadful losses, it is remaking itself as the arsenal not only of Europe but also the Middle East, exporting its air defence and drone expertise to Gulf countries beset by Russian ally Iran. Ukrainian drones strike inside Russia frequently: in the early hours of Monday, one hit an apartment block in the fancy Moscow neighbourhood of Ramenki, 11 stops on the metro from Red Square, over which the Victory Day parade will trundle.
That event itself will not be the awesome pageant of Russian firepower that Putin would have preferred beaming at from the reviewing stand. It was announced last week that proceedings would be scaled down due to a “terrorist threat” from Ukraine, which we should interpret as fear that Ukrainian drone operators might perceive this display of martial grandeur as an irresistible target for mischief. This week, Russia was reduced to suggesting a ceasefire for 8–9 May and expressing hope that Ukraine would join it. Zelensky retorted by suggesting one for 5–6 May and expressed hope that Russia would join it, waspishly noting that “human life is incomparably more valuable than the ‘celebration’ of any anniversary”.
More miserably still for Putin, plausible reporting suggests that he is now contemplating all of the above largely from bunkers. He has made only two public appearances this year and images of him on television are substantially pre-recorded. He is said to be plagued by fear of assassination – especially since last December’s car-bombing of Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov and February’s shooting of Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, both in Moscow – or a coup. He meets few people in person and his personal staff are forbidden from using smartphones or public transport. He is said to be morbidly micromanaging the war in Ukraine. A keen student of history, Putin will be well aware of the unhappy parallels that might be drawn with another leader whose ambitions of territorial expansion had gone awry in 1945, finding himself cloistered in a subterranean lair, frantically moving imaginary divisions around a map, accompanied by only the most dogged of loyalists.
It is, of course, far from impossible that these reports, originating with European intelligence services, are some combination of wishful thinking and “psychological operations” intended to further stoke Putin’s paranoia. But nobody’s patience lasts forever, not even Russia’s. Saturday will be Putin’s fifth Victory Day since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began – and there’s still no victory in sight.
Andrew Mueller is a contributing editor and the host of Monocle Radio’s The Foreign Desk. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
