Russia staged a sharply scaled-back version of its annual military parade on Saturday, amid fears of drone strikes by Kyiv, growing criticism of the Kremlin and increasing difficulties for its armed forces in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin watched from a podium as goose-stepping soldiers marched across Red Square, before delivering a brief speech praising Russia’s armed forces and comparing Russia’s current war in Ukraine to its resistance against invading Nazi forces in World War II.
Russia’s soldiers “are resisting an aggressive force that is being armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc,” Putin said. “But despite that, they are going forward.”
The parade, usually a centerpiece of Putin’s political calendar designed to showcase Russian power with extravagant displays of weaponry, was much more modest this year, as Putin’s armies struggle to gain ground despite enormous losses on the battlefields of Ukraine.
More than one million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago, according to Western estimates. The war has also placed major economic strain on the country at a time of rising inflation and falling real wages exacerbated by Western sanctions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said Ukraine would honor a three-day cease-fire to facilitate the exchange of 1,000 prisoners of war held by each side, and later issued a decree stating that Red Square wouldn’t be targeted.
The decree, published on Zelensky’s website, included the exact grid coordinates for the square that borders Putin’s official residence inside the Kremlin and is a place from which soldiers have marched off to wars and celebrated military successes.
President Trump on Friday announced the cease-fire in a post on Truth Social and said he had requested it from Putin and Zelensky.
Instead of intercontinental ballistic missiles, armored vehicles and other military hardware, parade goers were shown a video of that equipment, either in action in Ukraine or being tested for readiness. Russian authorities cited a “terrorist threat” from Kyiv as the reason for not displaying military hardware in the square.
The event also took place without a significant presence of foreign guests. Major world leaders who have attended in previous years were absent, with guests this year including the leaders of Laos, Malaysia, several post-Soviet nations and the unrecognized Republika Srpska, a Serb-controlled region in the Balkans.
Russian allies such as Hungary and Venezuela have lost their Moscow-friendly leaders in recent months, and Iran, another ally, is embroiled in a war with the U.S. China’s Xi Jinping, who attended last year, was absent.
The downgraded parade comes at a time of political headwinds for Putin , whose approval rating inside Russia is falling amid anger over the toll of the war and restrictive policies connected to it.
Public criticism of the Russian leader, once unthinkable amid draconian limits on free speech, has drawn outsize attention in recent weeks. Sweeping restrictions on mobile internet access across the country, which authorities have justified as a necessary response to the threat of Ukrainian drones that can use cellphone towers for navigation, have caused frustration among residents and complaints from businesses about lost revenue.
Political analysts say few members of the Russian leadership want a continuation of the Ukraine war, especially with the lack of progress on the battlefield. The war has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union’s struggle against Nazi forces in World War II, a celebrated chapter of Russian history that Putin says the current crop of soldiers is reprising in Ukraine.
Compounding Putin’s issues is the constant threat of Ukrainian attack. Drones and missiles have been menacing Russia’s cities and its energy infrastructure in a bid to damage the Russian economy and force an end to the invasion. The size and significance of the parade made it an obvious target.
Kyiv this week sent a clear message about its capabilities. On Friday, its strikes forced authorities in south Russia to temporarily close 13 airports, with a key aviation control center damaged by drones. On Monday, a drone struck an elite residential complex in Moscow, highlighting the capital’s vulnerability ahead of the parade.
Military leaders in Kyiv say their air campaign is aimed in part at bringing the fight home to Russians, including the more affluent Muscovites whom Putin has sought to shield from the effects of the war. Oleksandr Syrskiy, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, on Friday said Russia had formed dozens of new military units tasked specifically with countering the Ukrainian threat from the skies. But he added that Ukraine is undeterred.
“We continue to maintain the initiative and set the pace,” he said in a social-media post.
The video displaying Russia’s state-of-the-art military equipment on Saturday sought to showcase the reach of its air defenses. But in parts of the country targeted by Ukrainian drones in recent weeks, Russia’s apparent inability to prevent such attacks is puzzling.
“The general public believes that Russian air defense is completely ineffective, given that we constantly see new attacks on the same targets,” said Ruslan Leviev, a Russian military analyst for the Conflict Intelligence Team, an open-source investigative group.
In Tuapse, a Black Sea port city in southern Russia where Ukrainian drones have repeatedly hit an oil refinery, some residents say there is growing anger about the strikes that have caused oil to stain the beaches and clouds of toxic smoke to blanket residential areas.
One local resident said the town is divided between supporters of the war urging escalation and “those who didn’t support the war from the start realizing even more clearly, ‘when on earth is this all going to end?’”
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com
