“And they may have planned some ‘final solution of the Ukrainian question’ for close to May 9.” “I have to presume that Russian generals know how keen Putin is on V-Day celebrations,” he told Grid. Vasily Gatov, an expert in Russian media at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center on Communication, added that “it is very Russian and Soviet to arrange some kind of achievement in accordance with a particular date - Stalin’s birthday, Victory Day or others.” Gatov believes it may not be Putin himself but his top military aides who will have the calendar in mind. “It’s important for Putin to secure at least some symbolic victory in Ukraine by May 9, at any cost.” She noted that just prior to last year’s festivities Putin called May 9 “the most important, holy holiday.” “May 9 is very significant for Russians,” Kseniya Kirillova, a former reporter for Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, told Grid. Put differently, it’s hard to imagine a Victory Day in Russia with nothing to celebrate. To understand Victory Day, think Memorial Day, Veterans Day and July 4 rolled into one, overlaid with an almost North Korea-style military gloss. The Soviet Union lost at least 24 million civilians and troops - by far the highest figure for any country in the war. It is both a nationwide celebration of the victory over Adolf Hitler’s Reich (in Russia, it’s not “World War II” but the “Great Patriotic War”) and a recognition of extraordinary sacrifice. On the other, Victory Day is no ordinary holiday in Russia. On the one hand, it seems odd that a wartime leader would make tactical decisions based on a holiday. intelligence intercepts suggested Putin was focused on May 9 as a date on which “he can show a victory.” In a statement posted to Facebook, the general staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces cited “propaganda work being carried out among the personnel of the Russian Federation’s armed forces, which imposes the idea that the war must be ended by May 9, 2022.” CNN reported that U.S. I thought of all this the other day, when word came that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be factoring May 9 into his war planning. Each spring, more bones were found, and each year, May 9 was the day on which they were given a proper farewell, whether anyone knew their names or not. Similar ceremonies had been held for decades all over European Russia: men who had been left where they fell in the early 1940s, brought to the surface by the passage of time. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and dozens of other dignitaries, but I drove a few hours outside Moscow for a different “V-Day” story: A village was burying two local soldiers whose remains had been found in the spring thaw. That year’s event drew President Bill Clinton, U.N. A sense of pride and patriotism was palpable. Across the city, all day long, one found a festive atmosphere older men wore their medals and ribbons on jacket lapels.
I had lived in Russia earlier in the 1990s and seen how Russians marked the day - hourslong military parades featuring soldiers past and present, tanks and other armored vehicles, all marching through Moscow’s Red Square. On May 9, 1995, I was in Moscow, covering the 50th anniversary of Victory Day, the end of World War II in Europe.
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