“Nuclear forces always ready for combat,” says Putin

Russian strategic nuclear forces are “always” ready for combat, Vladimir Putin said during a speech on Thursday commemorating the Soviet victory against Hitler. The Russian president supervised the military procession on Red Square in Moscow, the centerpiece of the Kremlin, supposed to exalt the power of the country, which saw 9,000 soldiers, armored vehicles, missile launchers and planes parade, according to Russian media.

“Russia will do everything to avoid a global confrontation. But, at the same time, we will not allow anyone to threaten us. Our strategic (nuclear) forces are always on alert,” declared the Russian president.

In a sign of an ever-deepening break with the West, Putin recently ordered the holding of tactical nuclear exercises, involving troops stationed near Ukraine, in response to Western “threats” targeting Russia.

On Thursday, Vladimir Putin accused the West of wanting to “forget the lessons” of the Second World War and affirmed that Moscow, which presents itself as a counterweight to Anglo-Saxon influence, rejected “the pretension to exclusivity” of any government or alliance.

Vladimir Putin has long mobilized the memory of the 39-45 war, which left 27 million dead on the Soviet side, to legitimize his power. And he regularly presents the assault on Ukraine as a fight against a government described as “neo-Nazi.”

But Thursday’s parade did not escape the security and diplomatic fallout from the assault on kyiv. Vladimir Putin, isolated on the international scene, was surrounded on Thursday by only a few heads of state drawn from among his close allies. Among them, the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan or Turkmenistan, according to the Kremlin, which added that those of Cuba or Laos were also invited.

Some parades were also canceled for “security” reasons, particularly in the regions of Kursk, near the Ukrainian border, or Pskov, next to Estonia.

However, if the 2023 military parade had been very modest, with very little modern equipment while Russian troops were mobilized massively on the Ukrainian front, the situation was quite different this year.

It must be said that last year, Russia was emerging from a series of bitter failures. But there, it has just made a series of territorial advances, while the Ukrainian troops seem to be in difficulty. kyiv now fears that Russia, which has more men and a powerful military industry, will launch a large-scale operation this summer.

Domestically, Vladimir Putin’s power is also more uncontested than ever and the fierce repression has crushed all dissenting voices.