President Vladimir V. Putin has cultivated the annual Victory Day parade commemorating the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany into a cornerstone of Russian patriotic ritual. Tanks and nuclear launchers roll across Red Square in a showcase of military prowess and righteous pride that the Kremlin has used to justify the country’s great-power posture toward the West.
This year, the parade is highlighting a moment of weakness for Mr. Putin.
Moscow is under a heavy security presence as Ukraine rattles Russia with long-range drone and missile strikes. The parade on Saturday will include none of the usual muscle-flexing missiles and armor. Personnel from Russian military academies and other servicemen will make their way through Russia’s most famous square. They include more than 1,000 soldiers and officers still active in the war in Ukraine and some from North Korea, who last year took part in pushing Ukrainian troops out of Russia’s Kursk region, according to a live broadcast from the event.
The Russian authorities have appeared exposed as they have acknowledged that the beefed-up security is intended to protect Mr. Putin. Early this week, the Russian leader appealed unsuccessfully to the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, for a parade-day cease-fire. Then, on Friday night, in a decree tinged with mocking humor, Mr. Zelensky said that Ukraine would “permit” Russia to hold the event by not attacking it.
The truncated parade, on what is the high point of the Russian calendar, is adding to a sense that Moscow and other major cities can no longer be insulated from the war.
Drastic internet blackouts that the security services have portrayed as necessary precautions have angered Russians. After years of war-infused growth, the Russian economy is contracting, while the country’s budget deficit is reaching record highs.
On the front lines, the Russian Army is barely moving, making the prospect of victory seem more distant than ever. More than four years into the war, Russia is still trying to seize the eastern Donbas region, which it says is a primary objective. In World War II, the Soviets helped defeat the Nazis in less time.
“Since the beginning of the year, a certain shift has occurred that we don’t yet fully realize,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “This shift consists of the fact that there is talk nonpublicly and, to a lesser extent, publicly that everyone is fed up.”
“Everything that’s happening today from the point of view of security is a consequence of the fact that the government feels vulnerable,” Ms. Stanovaya added in a phone interview. “It is actually strange that he is holding the parade in such a situation.”
To cancel the event would have made Mr. Putin look even weaker. So ahead of the parade, the Kremlin went to great lengths to ensure the event’s safety.
The blocking of the mobile internet — which Russia says Ukraine uses to guide drones — brought the digital functions of Moscow to a standstill. That stripped Muscovites of the modern conveniences that have long served as a source of local pride and added to an accruing sense of irritation.
Similar restrictions were put in place a year ago, when Mr. Putin hosted a roster of foreign leaders, including Xi Jinping of China, displaying Moscow as a center of a rising non-Western world order.
But at that time, many Russians were hopeful that President Trump would soon mediate an end to the war, making them more willing to endure restrictions.
Today, the mood in the Russian capital is strikingly different, said Ilya Grashchenkov, a Moscow-based political analyst. “Putin is saying he doesn’t intend to end it until victory,” Mr. Grashchenkov said. “This kills hope.”
According to Mr. Grashchenkov, Russian elites are awaiting an exit plan by Mr. Putin from the crisis in Ukraine. “But so far there are only hints,” he said, “and they make the elites anxious.” One possibility, he added, is a transition to a perpetual war footing and the “transformation of Russia into something like Iran or North Korea.”
Over the past four years, Mr. Putin has survived multiple crises that led to predictions of an imminent collapse of his rule.
Early in the war, his army suffered painful defeats, including a forced withdrawal from Kyiv, a city that Mr. Putin has described as the cradle of Russian civilization. Months later, Russian troops fled a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region and later abandoned their only foothold on the right bank of the Dnipro River near Kherson.
In 2023, mercenaries led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin staged an audacious and reckless mutiny, marching toward Moscow. Ahead of the 2023 Victory Day parade, Ukrainian drones hit the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin. In both 2022 and 2023, Ukraine managed to severely damage the Crimean Bridge, a symbol of Russia’s control over the peninsula.
And yet Mr. Putin maintained a sense of stability at home while his army continued to crawl forward, holding the initiative since Ukraine’s failed 2023 counteroffensive and slowly but steadily capturing land in the Donbas.
On Thursday, Yuri Ushakov, Mr. Putin’s foreign policy aide, asserted that Ukraine must order a withdrawal from the Donbas as a condition for a cease-fire and peace negotiations.
Like Mr. Putin, the Russian economy for years also defied predictions of imminent collapse. It initially expanded after the invasion, fueled by a war-related cash influx that pushed standards of living to their highest levels in post-Soviet history.
That momentum hit a wall last year, and Russia now stands on the precipice of crisis because of high interest rates and Western sanctions that have limited revenues from energy exports.
“For the first time,” Mr. Grashchenkov said, “we’re facing a severe economic downturn.”
But Ms. Stanovaya, the Russia analyst, cautioned that what appeared to be Mr. Putin’s current weakness and vulnerability might actually reflect his patience in weathering storms. At any point, she said, he could choose to escalate Russia’s war effort, perhaps by conducting another forced mobilization or seizing assets to fund the military, which would change the narrative of weakness.
“No one knows the limits where Putin might hit the table and say, ‘Enough,’” Ms. Stanovaya said. “He can endure for a very long time. And then he warns about something and does it, as it was with the war.”
