Reality behind a parade of power

The Star

12 hours ago

RUSSIA celebrated the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat last month with visiting heads of state and a show of armed might in Red Square, staged as a display of global clout, grandiose and intimidating, and a portent of eventual triumph in the war against Ukraine.
The annual military parade below the walls and towers of the Kremlin was the largest since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a commemoration the government and its cheerleaders used to raise support for the war, conflating what may be the greatest source of national pride with the far more divisive current conflict.
'Our great victory 80 years ago is a new narrative, a new conception of Russia's current standoff with the West,' Sergei Lyaguzin, an international relations professor, said on Russian state television.
Behind the pomp, though, Russia stands on shakier ground than the Kremlin's confident show suggested.
Its military is barely advancing on the battlefield, its economy is sputtering, prices for oil, its main export, are falling and, perhaps most surprising, US President Donald Trump is hinting that his view of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war is souring.
Putin has played down these challenges, accepting short-term economic pain and diplomatic setbacks in the hope that his persistence will eventually yield a triumph of historic proportions, said Alexander Kolyandr, a Russian economy expert at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, a research group.
'They are convinced that they are more resilient than their opponents,' he said. 'They believe that victory will not go to the side that is the best, but to the one that remains standing the longest.'
After initially echoing Moscow's talking points – even falsely blaming Ukraine for the war – Trump has hardened his rhetoric about Putin and the Kremlin in recent weeks.
Trump is threatening to punish the buyers of Russian oil, he is sending more advanced weapons to Ukraine and he has struck a mineral development deal with Ukraine that gives the United States a valuable stake in Ukraine's future security and prosperity.
Russian forces have seized an average of 6.5 sq km a day over the past three months, according to calculations by a Finnish-based military intelligence firm, the Black Bird Group. At this pace it would take Russia years to conquer the regions that it has already claimed to annex.
Rather than changing course, Putin has doubled down on his policies and demands.
He has declined Trump's proposal to freeze the fighting along the current front line before starting to negotiate a peace deal, and has demanded that the United States get the European Union to lift some of its sanctions.
At the same time, Russian forces have continued to pound Ukrainian cities, leading Trump to issue a rare rebuke of Putin.
'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently,' with additional sanctions, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Despite such challenges, about a dozen heads of state were in Red Square for the celebrations, underscoring the Kremlin's claim that far-reaching Western sanctions have failed to isolate Russia.
More than 130 pieces of military equipment, including intercontinental missile carriers, rolled through Moscow and soldiers from friendly nations marched with Russian troops, showing that Russia is not alone in what it presents as a proxy struggle against Nato.
On the economic front, however, Russia is wounded and losing steam, pressured by falling oil prices, rapidly dwindling foreign currency reserves, record-high interest rates and the punitive sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has accepted a decision made last month by a group of major oil exporting countries, known as Opec+, to ramp up output, a move that has depressed oil prices already hit by the impact of Trump's tariffs.
Falling oil revenue, which finances about 40% of Russia's government budget, is already hurting its war economy.
The Russian finance ministry more than tripled the budget deficit forecast for this year to 1.7% of gross domestic product, and slashed its price forecast for its main type of exported oil from US$70 (RM299) per barrel to US$56 (RM239).
Analysts estimate that to cover the rising deficit, the government would have to either spend its remaining rainy day stockpile of foreign reserves and gold, or print more money, which would worsen the already high inflation, now running at about 10%.
The Kremlin considered, but then scrapped, a proposal to reduce public spending to compensate for declining oil prices.
Putin has tolerated the central bank's policy of keeping interest rates at record highs in an attempt to dampen price increases.
But a growing chorus of Russian officials and businesspeople has blamed the interest rates, kept at 21% since October, for wiping out growth without cooling prices, a lose-lose economic scenario known as stagflation.
Russian consumers are grumbling about food prices, which rose at an annual rate of more than 12% in March, but these concerns have so far have not translated into broader dissatisfaction with the government, said Denis Volkov, head of Moscow-based independent pollster Levada Centre.
Rising wages, government subsidies for the poor and decades of living with high inflation mean that in surveys conducted as recently as April more Russians say that their economic situation is improving, rather than worsening, he said.
That political stability allowed Moscow to project national unity in the anniversary celebrations, despite the lack of major diplomatic or military breakthroughs in the war.
Putin has regularly used Victory Day, Russia's main secular holiday, to convey that time is on his side.
Russia's determination and size ground down Germany's Wehrmacht, Europe's military hegemon at the time, in World War II, goes the propaganda messaging, and Ukraine's Nato-supplied and trained forces will eventually follow suit. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times