Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced Tuesday that this year’s Victory Day parade on May 9 will proceed without tanks, missiles, armored vehicles, or cadets, marking the first time in nearly two decades that Red Square will host a military parade containing no actual military. Officials cited the “current operational situation,” which is military-speak for “we’re getting our asses kicked so badly in Ukraine even the museums are empty.”
It will look similar to this, just without these tanks. And people. (P-KDmitry/depositphotos)
The parade, which traditionally celebrates the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, has for years been the Kremlin’s premier opportunity to wheel out tanks, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and various tubes of menace in front of foreign dignitaries. Last year’s anniversary featured 11,500 troops, 180 military vehicles, and Yars nuclear-tipped ICBMs trundling past Vladimir Putin while Xi Jinping clapped politely. This year, attendees will get troops, a flyover, and the strong implication that everything else is on fire in a sunflower field or being towed back to Kyiv behind a tractor by a Ukrainian farmer.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blamed Ukraine, citing what he described as “terrorist activity,” apparently in reference to Ukrainian drones that have lately been reaching deep into Russia, including the Baltic port of Ust-Luga, the Samara region, and the Perm region in the Ural mountains. Perm is approximately 870 miles from the Ukrainian border, which Peskov did not mention because mentioning it would invite embarrassing follow-up questions that he can’t answer because his polonium immunizations aren’t up to date.
“All measures are being taken to minimize the danger,” Peskov told reporters, in the tone of a man who knows measures are not, in fact, minimizing the danger. He did not specify which measures. Because there aren’t any.
According to Ukraine’s General Staff, Russia has lost nearly 11,000 tanks since launching its invasion four years ago, a figure roughly equivalent to “all of them.” The Kremlin has compensated by pulling Cold War-era T-62s and T-54/T-55s out of long-term outdoor storage in places like Buryatia, where they have spent decades being weathered by Russian weather. The T-55, designed in 1948, is older than the moon landing, color television, and Vladimir Putin. Several have already been captured intact by Ukrainian forces, who reportedly pose next to them like tourists at a museum, which is appropriate, because they are.
Analyst Natia Seskuria of the Royal United Services Institute observed that pulling the hardware from the parade “signals a degree of vulnerability rather than strength,” which is the most polite possible way to phrase “they ran out of tanks.” She added that the omission may also reflect “the need to preserve equipment, avoid highlighting battlefield losses, and reduce the exposure of valuable military assets,” each of which is a separate confession dressed up as a logistics issue.
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico will attend, as will other foreign dignitaries, because someone has to. Last year, Putin declared a unilateral 72-hour ceasefire ahead of the event and shut down cellphone internet across Moscow for several days to keep Ukrainian drones from “filming” the parade. This year, the strategy appears to have shifted from “hide the parade from drones” to “hide the parade from itself.”
Smaller parades will continue elsewhere across Russia, including in St. Petersburg, where rehearsals were already underway as of Tuesday, suggesting that whatever equipment Russia does still possess is being concentrated in cities not currently being publicly humiliated. Putin, who has ruled Russia for over 25 years and has spent four of them losing tanks faster than they can be photographed, has turned Victory Day into what officials describe as a key pillar of his tenure. The pillar remains. The tanks do not.
The parade will take place May 9. Attendance is mandatory for those still in Moscow, but apparently optional for the equipment.
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