KYIV — The Kremlin’s annual May 9 military parade, celebrating victory in World War II, will not feature tanks, artillery or missile systems as Russia’s armed forces struggle to push through defensive fortifications in eastern Ukraine.
Regular Ukrainian drone attacks on key sites across Russia have also exposed vulnerabilities deep inside the country, while Moscow has also struggled to replenish its troop numbers amid the bloody conflict in the Donbas.
“Due to the current operational situation, students of the Suvorov military and Nakhimov schools, cadet corps, and military equipment column will not participate in the military parade this year,” the Russian defense ministry said in a statement late Tuesday.
May 9, which marks the Soviet triumph over Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, has become a core symbol of Russia’s modern militaristic ideology and one of its justifications for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 under the pretext of fighting Naziism, which it accuses Ukraine of harboring.
Parades in Moscow have traditionally included columns of troops, dozens of tanks, artillery systems, air defense, nuclear-capable weapons and other military equipment columns.
This year, the parade will include veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine, some military students, marines and a military aviation show.
While there is limited independent battlefield information, the Ukrainian armed forces regularly update estimated Russian losses in Ukraine.
As of Wednesday, according to Kyiv, Russia has lost more than 1 million troops dead and wounded, more than 11,000 tanks, 24,490 armored vehicles, 40,000 artillery systems, more than 1,300 anti-aircraft systems, 435 jets and 350 helicopters in Ukraine since 2022.
POLITICO was not able to verify those numbers. Independent OSINT analytics from Oryx, a Dutch warfare research group collating verified, visually confirmed information about both Ukrainian and Russian losses during the war, confirmed that as of April 1, Russia had lost more than 24,487 different kinds of military equipment in Ukraine.
