Four years ago, President Vladimir Putin offered Moscow and its business elite a de facto deal: Support my war in Ukraine, and in exchange you won’t have to think about it. In the past week, that deal was broken.
Not that Moscow was ever fully immune: As long ago as May 3, 2023, the first two Ukrainian drones to reach Moscow exploded over the Kremlin, doing no damage but revealing that the capital’s air defenses weren’t as stellar as advertised—and that the war wasn’t as far away as Muscovites assumed. Eventually, the Ukrainians shifted their efforts toward Moscow’s airports, using drones dozens of times to buzz the runways or circle the airports, deliberately creating travel chaos and expense.
Last week, the whining noise of unmanned flying objects could be heard in the city of Moscow once again. On the morning of May 7, the mayor of Moscow announced that the Russian air force had shot down hundreds of Ukrainian drones aimed at the city. Two days later, Moscow was due to host Russia’s annual May 9 military parade, a celebration linked very intimately with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who revived this Soviet-era celebration of Stalin’s victory over Nazi Germany and his conquest of Europe.
[Simon Shuster: Building tanks while the Ukrainians master drones]
Suddenly, and very publicly, Russian officials appeared nervous, afraid that their parade would be spoiled. The Russian foreign minister issued a threat, promising “no mercy,” whatever that means, if Ukrainians struck the parade. The Kremlin’s spokesman reassured Muscovites that security was tight because the “threat from the Kyiv regime” had already been taken into account. The Russian president even persuaded the American president to ask the Ukrainian president for a one-day cease-fire. Volodymyr Zelensky granted Putin’s wish, after Trump offered to broker an exchange of 1,000 prisoners of war. Zelensky then issued a magnanimous, droll decree, formally granting Putin permission to hold the parade.
The tone of Russia’s official communications has changed, and no wonder: Three years after the first drones exploded over the Kremlin, and more than four years into a conflict that was supposed to be nothing more than a brief “special military operation,” Muscovites have no choice but to think about the war. Alleged security measures—some think they are a form of censorship—had already rendered cellphone coverage in Moscow and across Russia unreliable, at times nonexistent. Although Russians had already lost access to most forms of Western social media, in April the state cut access even to the Russian-built app Telegram, as well as many VPNs. Without public internet many physical systems, including ATMs, also stopped working. Ride apps don’t function either. These inconveniences come on top of high inflation and high interest rates that have weighed even on Russia’s wealthiest businesses and consumers for months.
The war, and the Kremlin’s anxiety about the war, is also finally now visible on the streets. Briefly, during the former Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin’s very short rebellion in 2023, Muscovites were told to stay home for fear of violence. For the past several days, they were once again put on high alert. According to a diplomat of my acquaintance, snipers were visible in and around Red Square, in advance of the parade, as well as soldiers with anti-drone weapons. Ordinary people were prevented from entering the city center. Photographs taken on the day of the parade show empty streets.
Russians watching the parade from farther away would also have noticed some differences. Fewer foreign leaders bothered to show up this year, and no tanks, missiles, or fighting vehicles were on display. The whole show was brief, lasting only 45 minutes. Putin looked gray, anxious. Solemn North Korean soldiers, marching alongside Russians, provided the only novelty. But their presence was a reminder of the thousands of North Koreans who died helping Russia recapture its own Kursk province, which Ukrainian forces occupied for eight months in 2024–25. Also, as the only foreigners present in significant numbers, the North Koreans sent an ominous message about the current state of Russia’s alliances.
Of course, it was just a parade. But the anniversary matters because Putin thinks it matters. He revived the May 9 celebration in its current form in 2008, deliberately choosing to celebrate the moment of Moscow’s imperial victory, when Stalin controlled all of the territory between Moscow and Berlin. Perhaps not coincidentally, Russia invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia later that year.
[Anne Applebaum: Ukraine’s plan to starve the Russian war machine]
The carefully promoted cult of the Second World War started in Soviet times, but Putin has deepened and expanded it. The loss of the Soviet empire in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 created enormous nostalgia for 1945, and Putin has been promoting that nostalgia for more than two decades. During that time, he also built that nostalgia into the fabric of the city of Moscow and other cities across Russia, adding and expanding the monumental sculptures and brutalist memorials that glorify the heroic war dead.
Now, at last, the cult of the war has caught up with him. Putin knows he can’t live up to the mythology he created, and everyone else can see that too. His unnecessary, illegal, brutal war in Ukraine has already lasted longer than the Russian war against the Nazis, killing or wounding more than a million Russian soldiers and producing neither military nor political nor any other kind of success. On the contrary: He can’t even hold a parade in Moscow without fearing that the Ukrainians will disrupt it.
That doesn’t mean his Ukraine war is over, or that Putin’s reign has ended. But it does mean that Russians in general, and Muscovites in particular, can now clearly see the contrast between propaganda and reality. A vacuum has opened up, and sooner or later something else, or someone else, will fill it.
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