Victory Day in Russia: Parade for One and Drones Over Grozny

May 9th in Russia — Victory Day — is the holiest date on the national calendar. But this year's holiday told two stories at once, and together they reveal exactly what the ritual has become. The first story is about the parade itself. An analysis making the rounds this week asked why the Kremlin places such enormous importance on the May 9th ritual, and the answer is both obvious and deeply unsettling. The parade is not for the veterans, most of whom are gone now. It is not for the families still carrying grief across generations. It is for Vladimir Putin — a legitimacy machine that runs once a year to position him as the heir to the Soviet victory over fascism, and to drape the current war in Ukraine in that same heroic frame. Strip away the May 9th mythology, and the invasion has no story. No grandfather standing behind it. The second story comes from the Caucasus — a region the host knows personally. On the same day Russia staged its most elaborate military pageant on Red Square, a drone struck Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, whose fighters have been deployed to Ukraine under the loyal and theatrical Ramzan Kadyrov. The war, in other words, was not a backdrop. It arrived at the party uninvited. And in Stavropol, a city in southern Russia near the Caucasus, kindergarteners marched in a military parade. Five and six year olds in uniform costumes, carrying flags, performing patriotism before they are old enough to understand what they are performing — or what war actually costs. Drones over Grozny. Children in Stavropol. A parade for one man on Red Square. That is the whole picture of what Victory Day has become: on one end of the same region, the war arriving in real and physical and dangerous form; on the other, the next generation being prepared to experience that war as glory. The host grew up in Russia and reflects honestly on what it means to be shaped by a system that decides what you believe before you are old enough to believe anything — and what it means to watch a genuine historical grief, twenty-seven million dead, be hollowed out and weaponized in service of a 21st century land grab.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to Refugee from Russia Podcast. I'm the host. And today we are talking about May 9th, Victory Day, the holiest of holy days in the Russian national calendar. And this year it delivered exactly the kind of theater you would expect from a regime that has confused pageantry with purpose for the better part of two decades. So let me set the scene for you because if you're an American listener, you might be thinking, okay, Victory Day, that's like their 4th of July. Right? Kind of. Except imagine if the Fourth of July was less about fireworks and barbecue and more about missiles rolling down Main Street while a strongman in a tailored coat watches from a podium and everyone around him applauds on cue. It is patriotism as performance. It is grief that has been weaponized, packaged, and sold back to the people whose grandparents actually did the dying. And I want to be careful here, because World War II, what Russians call the Great Patriotic War, was real. The suffering was catastrophic and real. The Soviet Union lost somewhere between 27 and 30 million people. Let me say that again. 27 million. That is a number that should flatten you. That is more than the entire population of Texas gone in one war. So the holiday itself, the original impulse behind it, the grief and the pride and the remembrance, that part I understand. That part is human. But what happens? Every May 9th in modern Russia is something different. It has been hollowed out. The genuine mourning has been replaced by something that serves a very specific political function. And this year, the story about it had a headline that I think cuts right to the heart of it. A parade for one. That is what this has become. A parade for one man. Think about what that means. The first story making the rounds this week was an analysis piece asking why the Kremlin places such enormous importance on the May 9th ritual. And the answer, when you really look at it, is both obvious and deeply unsettling. It is not for the veterans, most of whom are gone now. It is not for the families, still carrying grief across generations. It is for Vladimir Putin. It is a stage set. It is a legitimacy machine that runs once a year to remind everyone, inside Russia and outside it, that he is the heir to the greatest military victory in human history. That whatever he does, whatever war he starts, whatever city he bombs, he stands in an unbroken line with the soldiers who defeated fascism. That is a powerful story to tell. And if you are cynical and smart, which the Kremlin absolutely is, you never let that story get rusty. You polish it every year. You bring out the generals with so many medals on their chests, they look like they might tip forward. You make it bigger and louder and more overwhelming every single time. Because the louder it gets, the harder it is to ask the question underneath it all. Wait, what does any of this have to do with what is happening right now? And here is where it gets genuinely uncomfortable. Because right now, Russia is fighting a war in Ukraine. A war that started, depending on how you count, either in 2022 with the full-scale invasion, or back in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and started backing separatists in the East. Either way, it is a live, ongoing war. Soldiers are dying right now, not in 1945. Right now. And the regime is trying to drape that war in the symbolism of World War II, to make Putin's invasion feel like a continuation of the great struggle against fascism, rather than what it actually is. So when you watch the parade on Red Square, you are watching something that is simultaneously a memorial service and a propaganda operation. You are watching the past being used as a crowbar to pry open the present. And the question, the analysis raised, why does the Kremlin care so much about this ritual? The answer is because without it, the current war has no story. It has no heroic frame. It has no grandfather standing behind it. Strip away the May 9th mythology, and you are left with a 21st century land grab dressed in nothing at all. For American audiences, here is maybe the closest analogy I can offer. Imagine if a sitting president, in the middle of a controversial war, built every major speech around D-Day, every press conference, every rally. Imagine if the imagery of Normandy and the greatest generation was deployed not to honor that sacrifice, but to justify whatever military action was happening that week. People would eventually notice that the language of World War II was being used as a shield against scrutiny. That is exactly what is happening in Russia. Except there is no free press to notice it out loud, and the people who do notice it out loud tend to have very bad things happen to them. Now, let's talk about what was actually happening on the ground this May 9th, because the second story brings us right back to the region I know personally, the Caucasus. And this one is a gut punch of a story told in a single headline. Victory Day in the Caucasus. A drone attack on Grozny, and a column of kindergarteners at a parade in Stavropol. Read that again slowly. A drone attack on Grozny and kindergarteners at a parade. Same day, same holiday, same region, Grozny. If that name means anything to you, you probably know it from the 1990s, when it was essentially leveled twice into brutal wars between Russia and Chechen separatists. Wars that, by the way, were among the most devastating urban conflicts since World War II. Grozny was rebuilt eventually under Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman who runs Chechnya now and is famously loyal to Putin. Kadyrov's fighters have been deployed in Ukraine. He has made himself one of the most vocal and theatrical supporters of the war. So there is a grim irony to the fact that on the same day Russia is staging its most elaborate celebration of military glory, a drone is striking the capital city of one of its own constituent republics. Now, the drone attack in Grozny is almost certainly connected to the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian drone operations have been increasingly ambitious, reaching deeper into Russian territory, and the Caucasus has seen incidents before. Whether this specific attack was Ukrainian in origin or some internal security situation, I cannot say with certainty. But the symbolism is impossible to ignore. While the parade rolls down Red Square, while Putin stands on the podium in his great coat, a drone is hitting Grozny. The war is not a backdrop. The war is arriving at the party uninvited. And then there are the kindergartners in Stavropol. Stavropol is a mid-sized city in southern Russia, close to the Caucasus region. And what happened there on Victory Day is something I find genuinely difficult to describe without my voice going a little flat. Young children, kindergarten age, five years old, maybe six, marching in a military parade, dressed in little uniforms or costumes that evoke soldiers, carrying flags, performing patriotism for an audience of parents and officials. In America, children dress up for Halloween. They dress up for school plays. They dress up as astronauts and superheroes. That is normal and sweet. But there is something qualitatively different about dressing a five-year-old in military costume and putting them in a parade on a holiday that is being used in real time to justify an active war. These children cannot consent to what they are being enrolled in. They cannot understand the political meaning of the costumes they are wearing. They are being shaped deliberately, systematically, into future believers before they are old enough to ask what they believe and why. This is not unique to Russia. Militarism reaches children in a lot of countries. But the specific context here is what matters. Russia is at war. The war is not going well by most objective measures. Casualty numbers are enormous. Economic pressure is real. And in that context, the investment in capturing the next generation's imagination, in making them feel that military service and national sacrifice are romantic and necessary and inevitable. That investment is not sentimental. It is strategic. I grew up in Russia. I know what it is to be in a system that decides what you believe before you are old enough to believe anything. The children in Stavropol marching in that parade are not villains. They are children. Their parents may not even fully grasp what they are participating in, because the ritual has been normalized over so many years that it just feels like what you do on May 9th. You go to the parade, you bring the kids, you take pictures. But the juxtaposition the headline gives us, drones over Grozny, children in Stavropol, that is the whole story of what Victory Day has become. On one end of the same region, the war bleeding in real and physical and dangerous. On the other end, the next generation being prepared to think of that war as glory. A parade for one. That was the first headline. And I keep coming back to it. Because the tragedy of May 9th in Russia is not just political, it is also genuinely sad. There is real history there, real grief, real heroism from people who deserved better than to have their memory used this way. And every year the parade gets a little bigger, and the history gets a little more distant, and the man on the podium gets a little more comfortable wrapping himself in it. That's all for today's Refugee from Russia podcast. I want to ask you, honestly, what do you think happens to a society when its most important national holiday becomes completely untethered from honest remembrance? And when you look at those children marching in Stavropol, what do you imagine their lives look like ten years from now, twenty years from now, after being raised inside this particular story? I would genuinely love to know what you think. Leave a comment, send a message, find me wherever you find this show. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. See you in the next one. Bye.