Shortest ever Victory in Europe parade on Red Square
Allow me to report on this remarkable parade which I just watched on Russian state television from my hotel room in Heviz, Hungary. Indeed more remarkable than the parade broadcast was the fact that Russian state television so far triumphs very well over European censorship thanks to the dedicated internet website ontvtime.ru which carries all major state and private national channels of the Russian Federation.
The parade lasted 45 minutes in all and only marching personnel of the Russian and North Korean armed forces took part. They were doing quickstep, by which I mean that they marched at twice the speed that I have seen in the past. The physical demands of this pace clearly put on the sidelines the chubbier officers whom you normally saw at the head of each military unit. Also worth noting was the absence of women’s marching units. It was just physically fit men this time, ready to make a dash for safety in case of enemy attack on the parade.
As we know, no military hardware was sent across Red Square this year. It was absent for the first time since 2008. Not entirely absent, because it its place we television viewers and presumably the reviewing stand on Red Square were shown a five or seven minute film featuring each of the many high tech weapons systems, ships, submarines, strategic bombers that Russia possesses for self defense. The speaker added in each case that the strategic weapons are available for counter strikes, meaning that first Russia’s enemies get a chance to do their worst and then whatever is left of Russia responds in kind. Considering the nature of U.S. preventive or first strikes today one wonders whether Russia would be able to respond adequately. But that is a question for another day.
The parade ended in the traditional overflight of Moscow by air force jets streaming the red, white and blue colors of the Russian Federation flag. That was the only real present display of Russian miiitary hardware.
On the reviewing stand, Putin had at his side Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko and the president of Kazakhstan Tokayev. Putin’s speech from the tribune was empty standard issue rhetoric that was strictly backward looking and with no relevance to Russia’s challenges today.
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That there was no Ukrainian drone attack on the parade may be related to the agreement on a truce from today, 9th May through the 11th that was said to have been brokered by Donald Trump. I can only say thumbs up since it removed the possibility of strike and counterstrike between Russia and Ukraine that would have ignited a European war here and now. I take this very personally, because I have flight tickets to Petersburg on the 18th by way of Istanbul and it would have been problematic to fly there just ahead of or in the middle of a new full blown war.
But let us have no illusions. What we are witnessing in the scaled back Victory in Europe parade, in the shutdown of all Russian aviation in the south of the country yesterday and its only partial resumption today due to a destructive Ukrainian drone attack on the coordination center of Russian aviation the day before – it is the definition of the likely legacy of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s reign in Russia. That legacy looks to be an unfinished war on Ukraine that leaves the Zelensky regime intact and only partly achieves the initial objectives of the Special Military Operation which were about regime change in Kiev and the total exclusion of foreign military forces from Ukraine under conditions of Ukrainian neutrality. If instead the war ends in frozen status with no Ukrainian capitulation, only the (temporary) loss of the Donbas, then we can be sure there will be a European if not global war in 2029 as the Germans, British, French, Poles, Norwegians and other war-hungry Europeans seem to desire. In that war a Russian victory in conventional conflict is by no means assured and so it can easily progress to a nuclear exchange that will wipe European and Russian civilization off the face of the map. Whether the USA would be spared is still unclear. Trump is doing what he can to extract America from the war that his predecessors fomented as best they could.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026
You are being subjective. I am trying to be objective. I never said Trump is to be trusted. But I do say that the outbreak of a major European war in the next week or two was prevented by the almost certain intervention of Donald Trump who surely told Zelensky that the game is up. For this very reason I do see the possibility of the Ukraine war ending in a permanent cease fire brokered by Trump. I do not say this is good for Russia. On the contrary, I am saying it will be a sell-out of the 1 million Russian soldiers who died or were maimed for life in this Military Operation. OK, Russia will get to keep the Donbas, but that is the only positive thing that would come out of this war while Putin's major objective of regime change in Kiev and reweriting the security architecture with Europe will not be achieved. A lot of loss for a modest gain.
Mr. Doctorow, I must take issue with your last sentence, in which you wrote that "Trump is doing what he can to extract America from the war." How can that be, when Trump hasn't yet ended the war that he promised to END IN 48 HOURS? Why wasn't the corrupt Zelensky regime shut out COLD with a total end to weapons shipments? Oh, Trump just now sells them to NATO, which in turn gives them to Ukraine. Even if Trump remains neutral in the coming Euro-Russian War, you can bet that this stock manipulator plans on further fattening the stuffed coffers of the MICC as he cons more and more money from the European Globalists by selling them vastly overpriced weapons. Trump is NOT a man who can ever be trusted!