What does the Victory Day parade tell us about where Russia is today?
A1: Vladimir Putin has presided over project “restore Russia,” and the May 9 military parade with tanks and bombers passing through Red Square is but one in a vast array of Kremlin efforts to both manage public perceptions and nurture Soviet nostalgia. Inside Russia, the desire for these symbols seems genuine; majorities of even young Russians believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” which is hard for outsiders to fathom, given that literally millions of Russians died in World War II and millions more in the Gulag. To outsiders, the military parade seems part of the politics of distraction and the rewriting of history, an important characteristic of the Putin, and now Dimitry Medvedev, Kremlin style. What will not be discussed tomorrow is that young Russian men continue to sacrifice. Eight years after Vladimir Putin became president, the Russian army is still underfed, undertrained, and committing crimes against
