VICTORY DAY, MOSCOW MAY 9TH 2026: THE BEGINNING OF THE END

There are moments when you can see and recognize your enemy making a mistake. Its a little surreal that its not just you who sees it, almost everybody does. In fact it appears to be so obvious that your enemy is making a mistake in public, in front of the world, you have to start wondering if its you and your wishful thinking that, after years of war, has finally twisted your mind to see what it wants to see.

Not this time. In your conscious mind I want you to etch this moment of living history into your memory, relish every detail. Remember it and never let it go, because I have a feeling May 9 2026 marks the beginning of the final chapters in this war.

Napoleon famously said you should never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. And you should not, it’s far too much of a wasted opportunity if you do. Yet oddly enough almost every commentator has some take on it and how can you not?

We are witnessing what is wrong with Russia first hand, why it started this war, why it prosecuted it even when it failed to win, why it cannot accept its losing and can never succeeded, because the country it invaded has beaten it, even if that’s not glaringly obvious yet to everyone. It’s certainly obvious if you have the depth of knowledge and historical background information, and the deep understanding that in thousands of years of recorded history, humanity hasn’t changed one bit. Science and weapons may have transformed but we have not. War is about people and certain types of people in certain occupations always, always, make the same mistakes.

WHY HOLD THE MAY 9TH PARADE?

The answer is simple: because they always have, since 1946. In Russia the so called Great Patriotic War, where Russia was invaded by the Nazis and their allies on June 22nd 1941, eventually driven back to Berlin, Russian armies battered the Nazi Third Reich into submission and, because they had to be different, the Russians accepted the surrender on May 9th (everyone else accepted on May 8th).

Russia refuses to acknowledge the vast amount of aircraft, trucks and weapons that were supplied from the United States and the United Kingdom. It refuses to acknowledge the 16 British warships and 35 merchant ships sunk during the brutal convoys that ran in the harshest arctic winter weather to keep Russia supplied, nor the nearly 2,800 men who lost their lives in those ships.

Russia, since the Cold War began in 1946-8, has emphasized only its own military might. It has used the victory over the Nazis to unify its people as a nation state, it has in Putins time, gone again from a civilian celebration to a military might demonstration. He can no more think of not having the celebration than he can imagine actually losing this war he chose to inflict on his own country and on Ukraine.

He got away with running the parade in May 2022 because nothing much had changed, there was the equipment and Ukraine was in no position to do anything about it. The usual pro-Russian dignitaries had no problem turning up. By 2023 things were not going so well and the parade was noticeable for the famous T-34 showing up as the only tank, causing much amused commentary outside of Russia. By 2024, the parade again looked a bit thin but they dragged out the entire trainee police and officer cadre from every Russian military academy to bulk up the numbers. A special effort was made in 2025 because of the 80th anniversary, even Xi Jin Ping turned out, though he looked uncomfortable. What a difference a year makes. 2026 is a totally different affair.

THE MESSAGE

What the message is supposed to say and what it’s actually saying have become two different things. There were two different opportunities.

A. Admit that the war is in a critical phase and there won’t be a parade full stop. It’s not appropriate to be celebrating when the war is so intense and all of the State’s resources are being directed towards victory. That message could have spun really well, it would have told Russians the government is focused, determined and that it knows what its doing. It would have said there’s a way to go and everyone needs to back the government until the job is done.

Even that type of message is one the regime cannot stomach. Any of that would be an admission of not having been right, that there is weakness in the system. Putins lack of strategic foresight, even of basic history, is shown to be appallingly weak here.

In 1943 Josef Goebbels stood in the Sports Palaast in Berlin and delivered a thunderous, imploring message, known as the ‘Total War” speech. It was a fundamental moment, acknowledged to this day to have been an effective rallying cry that drove Germany on to the end two years later.

Putin’s paranoia and his determination to be personally responsible for winning this made such a move impossible. He has been caught in the worst kind of sunk cost fallacy. He keeps doubling down to make a failed project work when it never will. Rather than treat Russians as grown ups under threat from western imperialism, the horrors of moral degeneracy and anti-christian nazism, and give them something to cling on to, he can’t. And he can’t because this far into the war any hope of having anyone believe any of that propagandist nonsense is simply unrealistic. And this is the worst part – the regime knows it, and they don’t have an answer or know what to say.

The Soviets and the Nazis had ideology, core beliefs and something they believed in as if it were a religion. Putin has nothing, and thats always been a problem.

B. Turn the parade into a celebration of Russia and its sacrifices, move it towards celebrating people, give them some hope that the war will end soon. But thats simply not acceptable. Even making it about the past and only the past won’t do at this stage.

Putin has gotten himself caught in a twisted Kobyashi Maru scenario: either way he does this he loses. And it’s all his own doing. And the worst part? He has to be there in person – right at a time when there’s endless chat about coups, possible leaders of that coup, oligarch disquiet, critical commentary that hasn’t been seen on so many fronts since the war began. Ukraine’s president is openly mocking him with Class A phrases saying that ‘even Russia’s parade can only continue because of us’. It’s a bitter truth.

Ukraine will likely refrain from attacking the parade, not that it has any reason not to. The live TV broadcast isn’t something Putin wants to be seen fleeing from if anything happens. He doesn’t want an Anwar Sadat moment where gunmen leaped out of a parade truck and killed Egypt’s president in the middle of just such a parade.

What Putin has let happen by going on with this parade charade, is to expose his paranoia, expose his weakness and fears. He’s so paranoid about it virtually every remaining air defence platform the Russians have has been pulled back to Moscow, You would think it was impossible to get through, but Ukraine has twice shown that to be untrue.

As Putin watches the parade I strongly suspect the gleeful Ukrainians who have been teasing the Russians for their lack of air cover, will be demolishing oil refineries and military factories across western Russia. The parade goes on, reflecting a façade of awkward unreality. A Neroesque Putin, in effect playing the violin as the nation burns around him.

Russias answer is to threaten central Kyiv – by which they mean the government quarter. They have largely not attacked this sector on the basis that if they don’t then the Ukrainians will reciprocate, and to be fair both sides have largely done so. Putin doesn’t want to see the Kremlin or the MoD on fire and burning to the ground because that would look diabolically weak.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

All wars are marked by such moments. You can usually find it and see it at a point in any fight. They’re not always as obvious as they may seem. The beginning of the end for Germany was not Stalingrad – it was the invasion itself in June 1941. Within weeks German generals knew they had bitten off far more than they could chew and tried to say so, but nobody at OKW wanted to hear it and they certainly were not telling Hitler. Everything after that was just the consequence of the original mistake.

Putin did the same thing. The parallels are eerie. He made assumptions about the quality of the Russian army and failed to even begin to understand that he and he alone is the architect of the very system that is bringing Russia down. A monstrous level of klepto-autocracy that survives only in peacetime when the illusion of Russian power can be easily imposed in the minds of adversaries and never truly demonstrated. Put it into use and the entire system was revealed as corrupt from top to bottom – and it never once has crossed his mind that he was responsible for it.

Ukraine of course is now reaching the stage where not only has it started to kill so many Russian soldiers it is actually making repeatedly clear advances. Bit by bit the war is changing and it’s moving towards Ukraine every day at a higher pace. Russians know this. They feel it, sense it, and they see it. Civilians across Russia see and experience censorship and internet service withdrawals and have started to respond to deeply resented, almost continuous state interference in their lives. They no longer fully believe what they’re told.

Putin has failed to see how the lack of ideology, the overly interfering security state apparatus, the extremes of his regime and its corruption, the taxation, ‘the fees for everything’ exhaustion, is crippling domestic household finances, along with high inflation, food costs, and interest rates. Its destroying the people and while they don’t give a seconds thought to the plight of Ukraine, they do for their own rapidly more affected lives.

Putin is afraid, the regime has never looked weaker. The parade highlights everything thats wrong and going wrong with Russia and it’s all on public display to be seen by the world. That he is so afraid of what might happen to him, or what might be seen to happen is his priority, above anything else, tells you everything – and it ensures his days are numbered. The system he created has started to work against him, it may already be in full flow. His reliance on the Petrushev/FSB wing of the regime is even more telling. The retreat into the gilded cage is now complete. If anyone wants him they know where to find him.

The Analyst

militaryanalyst@bsky.social