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May 9 parades across other regions in Russia have been cancelled this year over 'security concerns'. VLADIMIR Putin paraded nuclear missile launchers, tanks and thousands of war-ready troops this morning ahead of his triumphant Victory Day event. -snip- Ahead of the patriotic event, Russia's fearsome intercontinental nuclear missiles were pulled through the capital's streets in a show of force to the West. Huge columns of troops marched towards the Red Square and even children in oversized battledress joined in the military festivities. The real events will be held on Thursday under intense security, with reports suggesting that Moscow's centrepiece show...

This is the moment more than 100 Russian troops are believed to have been killed in an ATACMS tactical ballistic missile strike on occupied Luhansk. A military training ground was seen being hit by multiple explosions typical of an ATACMS strike in footage captured by a drone flying high above. The strike targeted a group of 100-plus soldiers who were seen in aerial images, say OSINT analysts in what would be the single largest loss of Russian stories in months. The ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) showered the troops with hundreds of M74 APAM mini-bombs which are carried by the...

Ukraine's top commander said on Sunday Russian forces aimed to capture the town of Chasiv Yar by May 9, setting the stage for an important battle for control of high ground in the east where Russia is focusing its assaults. The fall of the town west of the shattered city of Bakhmut by the date Moscow marks the Soviet victory in World War Two would indicate growing Russian battlefield momentum as Kyiv faces a slowdown in Western military aid. Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who warned this weekend that the situation in the east had deteriorated, said Russia was focusing its...

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group that leads the ongoing assault on Bakhmut, on Tuesday accused the Russian army of fleeing its positions around the city. "Today one of the units of the Defense Ministry fled from one of our flanks ... exposing the front," said Prigozhin. Prigozhin, popularly known as Putin's chef because of the lucrative catering contracts he once held with the Kremlin, accused the Russian Defense Ministry of "scheming all the time" instead of fighting. Prigozhin said soldiers were abandoning their positions because of the "stupidity" of Russian army commanders, who he said were giving...

The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary force fighting in eastern Ukraine said on Tuesday he had been told he and his men would be regarded as traitors if they abandoned their positions in the city of Bakhmut. But Yevgeny Prigozhin said for the second time in a matter of days that his forces would leave Bakhmut if they did not receive the ammunition they needed to press the battle. He delivered his latest tirade in a profanity-laced audio message which coincided with Russia marking the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two with its traditional parade on Moscow's...

Traditional military parades set to take place next month have been called off in Crimea due to security concerns, according to Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian politician acting as head of the Russia-annexed Crimea since 2014. In a statement on his Telegram channel on Wednesday, Aksyonov said authorities in both Crimea and Sevastopol have decided not to hold parades or marches to mark Victory Day on May 9. Marches to mark Labor Day on May 1 have also been scrapped in the region, he said. The move comes as Ukraine has signaled it intends to recapture Crimea as part of its...

A Ukrainian fintech founder and drone developer is offering about $540,000 in prize money to the winner of a race to land a drone on Moscow's Red Square. Volodymyr Yatsenko, the co-founder of Monobank, a Ukrainian online banking service, announced the competition in a Facebook post last week. The competition is open to any Ukrainian drone developers and will take place on May 9, according to the Ukrainian Military Center, a Ukrainian news outlet covering defense. May 9 in Russia is Victory Day, a time when the country celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. Yatsenko himself is the developer...

Vladimir Putin scrapped his Victory Day flypast at the last minute because 'he was afraid of an aerial strike', it has been claimed. The military parade was scheduled to include 77 planes in the display of military might over Moscow's Red Square yesterday. Among the planes were his 'Doomsday' Ilyushin Il-80 which allows the Kremlin leader to continue ruling Russia during a nuclear war. But Putin pulled the plug onthe flypast abruptly before the parade, blaming poor weather. Airshows were also aborted or curtailed in at least ten other cities. Yet the sun came out in Moscow during the parade,...

It is now May 9, and the speculation about what Russian President Vladimir Putin will do on the occasion of the 2022 Victory Day Parade has been answered.Due to the war raging in Ukraine, a lot of SmartSet™ types had been speculating that Putin would use the Victory Day Parade as the catalyst to mobilize Russia for his war in Ukraine, if not declare war outright. Read my coverage of Putin’s possible courses of action at Tomorrow Is ‘Victory Day’ in Russia but Vladimir Putin Is Losing, So What Does He Offer Russia?.The preliminaries of the parade are in the...

Russia has stumbled again. Its southern offensive, the second phase of the Ukraine war, has failed to be the "biggest tank war since World War II," as some analysts were predicting. Instead, Russia's ground forces have shown the same lackluster performance on the ground, unable to break through anywhere. The towns and villages of the south, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday, "are the places where the fate of this war and the future of our state is being decided, now." Experts point to May 9th—Victory Day in Russia commemorating the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945—as the next decisive...

Almost of half of Israelis polled have expressed support for making, May 9, Victory Day, the Soviet commemoration marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, an Israeli holiday. Given the high number of Israelis of Russian and Ukrainian origin, the holiday is widely celebrated in Israel on an unofficial level though many Israelis are unaware “that the Jewish warriors’ contributions to the war efforts were a big part of the victory against Nazi Germany. There is a need for a call of action in order that this legacy will not be forgotten,” Victory Day Headquarters, an advocacy...

Russia's ministry of defence has unveiled a new array of war machines that it said would revolutionise the country's army and put it in a position to outclass Western rivals for the first time since the Cold War. Photographs released on Tuesday show the T-14 Armata tank, a semi-robotic replacement for Russia's current T-90, and its sibling armoured personnel carriers, fighting vehicles and self-propelled artillery models which will take pride of place at Saturday's Victory Day parade on Red Square. In earlier photographs released last month the turret was covered with fabric and only the chassis was visible. The Armata...

Some pro-Kremlin figures have openly glorified wartime dictator Stalin, while the current patriotic fervour has drowned out unvarnished accounts of Soviet military blunders or infamous "barrier troops" who shot deserters. - 'Drowned in Russian blood' - Viktor Astafyev, a writer known for his grim WWII stories, claims that Russia's war losses were much higher than the estimated 27 million and military commanders won the war at the expense of "a huge amount of blood." "It is they who threw people in the fire like straw," the war veteran wrote in a letter recently published by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta,...

Lithuanian political scientist Raimundas Lopata believes Lithuania’s decision to completely boycott the Russian Victory Day military parade on May 9, is “in line with Lithuania’s declared foreign policy attitudes” towards the Vladimir Putin-led Russian government. The Victory Day parade is the Russian Federation’s equivalent of V.E. day and takes place in Moscow’s Red Square. The 2015 edition will mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union’s war with Nazi Germany. As a result of Western sanctions on Russia following the MH17 disaster in July 2014, most EU and Western leaders will not attend this year’s Victory Day....

As May 9th, Victory Day in many post-Soviet states, approaches, decency demands that we celebrate the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s Germany and honor the millions of soldiers and civilians who gave their lives to rid the world of the scourge of Nazism. At the same time, if we truly want to honor the dead, we must take heed of the historical lies that the Kremlin, both in its Soviet and post-Soviet hypostases, promotes about the USSR’s relationship with Nazi Germany. For starters, the Moscow-controlled Communist International, and its sidekick, the Communist Party of Germany, made Hitler’s rise to power possible,...

I posted the videos of today's Victory parade in Moscow. They are from the Russian TV and take time to load and buffer. The USA is marching on the 31:00 of the first video, after Great Britain.

<p>This.is.appalling! Obama is having US Troops march in Russia’s Victory Day celebration. To make the day extra special the Russian’s are erecting posters of Stalin as a part of the celebration. Fitting since Obama has such love for tyrants and dictators around the world. It’s because Obama is jealous of those dictators and tyrants, he wants it so bad.</p>

Russia shows military power in Soviet-style parade by Stuart Williams Fri May 8, 10:51 pm ET MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia was Saturday to show off its military might at a Red Square parade to mark its victory in World War II, in the latest revival of a Soviet-era tradition amid renewed tensions with NATO. Ten thousand soldiers and 100 key items of military hardware were to be on display at the parade, which features heavy weaponry in a revival of large-scale show of power ordered by former president Vladimir Putin last year. "Our armed forces... must be capable of reliably...

Russia's display of heavy weapons in this year's Victory Day parade in Moscow is "not sabre-rattling", President Vladimir Putin insists. Tanks and intercontinental missiles are to be paraded for the first time since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The outgoing Russian leader said that Friday's parade to mark the end of World War II would demonstrate Russia's growing defence capabilities. "We do not threaten anyone and do not intend to do so," he said. A dress rehearsal for the parade was conducted on Monday. Mr Putin is stepping down as president on 7 May to be replaced...

American at Red Square Marks Victory Day Fri May 7,12:01 PM ET By JUDITH INGRAM, Associated Press Writer MOSCOW - As Russians dust off their Soviet-era medals and crowd Red Square on Sunday for a parade marking the 59th anniversary of Hitler's defeat, one veteran among them will be proudly displaying U.S. military insignia. For 80-year-old Joseph Beyrle of Muskegon, Mich., Russia's Victory Day is no less his holiday: After escaping from a German prisoner-of-war camp, Beyrle joined a Soviet tank division advancing on Berlin. "At first I was a curiosity. Then I became part of them," Beyrle said in...