Russia will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany on Friday with visiting heads of state and a show of armed power on the red square, staged as a representation of global influence, grandiosis and intimidating, and a port of final triumph in the war against Ukraine.
The annual military parade among the walls and towers of the Kremlin is expected to be the largest because Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a commemoration of the government and its cheerleaders used to support the war, which is the largest source of national pride with the much more division conflict.
“Our big win 80 years ago is a new story, new conception of the current impasse of Russia with the West,” said Sergei Lyaguzin, a professor of international relations, this week on the Russian state of television.
Behind the pump, however, Russia is on Shakier Ground than suggests the self -assured show of the Kremlin. The army hardly goes on the battlefield, the economy sputtered, the prizes for oil, the most important exports, valleys and, perhaps the most surprising, President Trump suggests that his view of President Vladimir V. Putin and his war acidify.
Mr Putin has played these challenges, accepting economic pain in the short term and diplomatic setbacks in the hope that his perseverance will ultimately yield a triumph of historical proportions, said Alexander Kolyandr, a Russian economy expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a research group.
“They are convinced that they are more resilient than their opponents,” he said in a telephone interview. “They believe that the victory does not go to the side that is the best, but to the one who stays the longest.”
After initially viewing Moscow’s talk points – even False the blame for Ukraine Before the war – Mr. Trump has His rhetoric paved About Mr Putin and the Kremlin in recent weeks. Mr. Trump threatens to punish the buyers of Russian oil, he is Send more advanced weapons To Ukraine, and he has concluded a mineral development agreement with Kiev that gives the United States a valuable interest in the future safety and prosperity of Ukraine.
In Ukraine, the Russian army achieves scarce profit and absorbs heavily losing. Russian troops have seized an average of 2.5 square miles a day over the past three months, according to calculations of a Finnish military intelligence company, the Black Bird Group. At this pace, Russia would take years to conquer the regions that it has already claimed to annex.
Instead of changing course, Mr. Putin doubles with his policy and requirements. He has Mr Trump’s proposal refused To freeze the fighting along the current front line before he starts a peace agreement, and has demanded that the United States lend the European Union to lift some of its sanctions.
At the same time, Russian troops have that continued to pound Ukrainian cities, who, according to the United Nations, kill or injure more than 2,600 civilians in the first three months of the year. A particularly fatal attack on Kyiv last month, Mr Trump led one Rare public punishment to Mr. Putin.
“It reminds me that he might not want to stop the war, he just taps me and should be treated differently,” with extra sanctions, Mr. Trump wrote about his truth social Platform after meeting President VolodyMyr Zensky from Ukraine at the end of April.
Despite such challenges, about a dozen head of state, including leaders of the economic giants China and Brazil, are expected on the red square on Friday, which underlines the claim of the Kremlin that far -reaching Western sanctions have not been able to insulate Russia. More than 130 pieces of military equipment, including intercontinental rocket carriers, are planned to roll through Moscow and soldiers of friendly countries are expected to march with Russian troops, which shows that Russia is not alone in what it presents as a proxy struggle against NATO.
Russia is on economic front Injured and steamPut under pressure by falling oil prices, rapidly falling reserves for foreign currency, record -high interest rates and the punitive sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The most important ally of Russia, China, is reduce purchases of Russian coal and steel when it adapts to a trade war with the United States.
Russia has accepted a decision this month by a group of large oil -exhibiting countries, known as OPEC+, To increase the outputA movement that has printed the oil prices that have already been hit by the impact of Mr Trump’s rates. The Benchmark Brent Oil Blend traded on Wednesday at around $ 62 per barrel, at around $ 75 when Mr. Trump announced his global rates on 2 April.
Falling oil income, which finances around 40 percent of the Russian government budget, damages all its war economy. The Ministry of Finance more than tripled this month budget deficit Prediction for this year up to 1.7 percent of the gross domestic product, and reduced their price forecast for the most important type of exported oil from Russia from $ 70 per barrel to $ 56.
Analysts estimate that in order to cover the increasing deficit, the government should spend its remaining rainy daily supply of foreign reserves and gold, or print more money that would worsen the high inflation, now by around 10 percent. The Kremlin was considering, but this week a proposal canceled to reduce government spending to compensate for falling oil prices.
Mr Putin has tolerated the central bank’s policy to keep the interest rates at record heights in an attempt to dampen the price increases. But a growing choir of Russian officials and business people have accused the accused the interest ratesSaved at 21 percent since October, for wagging growth without cooling prices, a loss-loss economic scenario that is known as internshipflation.
Russian consumers grumble about food prices, which rose with an annual rate of More than 12 percent In March, but these worries have not translated into a broader dissatisfaction with the government, Denis Volkov, head of the independent poller Levada Center based in Moscow.
Rising wages, government subsidies for the poor and decades of life with high inflation mean that in surveys that have recently been carried out as April, more Russians say that their economic situation is improving, rather than deteriorating, the Lord Volkov said in an interview in Moscow.
This political stability will enable Moscow to project the national unity in the celebration on Friday, despite the lack of large diplomatic or military breakthroughs in the war. Mr Putin regularly used the Victory Day, the most important secular holiday in Russia, to convey that time by his side.
The determination of Russia and the size of the German Wehrmacht, at the time the military hegemon of Europe, in the Second World War, the Propaganda messages, and the troops delivered and trained by Ukraine, will ultimately follow the example.
“These villains had again united against us,” said Yevgeniy, a Russian soldier who fought in Ukraine until he was injured in December. He asked to withhold his last name because he is not authorized to speak to the public.
“We would have been destroyed if a nation wiped out if we were not back,” he said, following the non -under -under -built justification of the Kremlin for the invasion. “My grandfather moisture; I moisture: we are the same.”
Alina Lobzina Better reporting from Istanbul.
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