Victory Day speech, Putin claims that Russia is fighting for the country in Ukraine

In his annual address commemorating the triumph over Nazi Germany in World War Two, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russian servicemen in Ukraine were fighting for the future of their nation.

Despite rumours that Putin was going to make a big surprise, his address was mostly about justifying Russia’s incursion. He linked the success in Ukraine to the West’s and Nato’s rejection of security concerns in 1945.

“Today you are fighting for our people in Donbas, for the security of Russia, our homeland.” he added, referring to the eastern area that is currently the major focus of Russia’s offensive.

He also made baseless accusations against NATO and Ukraine, and characterised the invasion as a preemptive strike, “They were preparing a punishing operation in Donbas to intrude on our historic lands. In Kyiv they were saying they might get nuclear weapons and Nato started exploring the lands close to us, and that became an obvious threat to us and our borders.”

Instead, he said that he was signing a decree that would provide particular assistance to the relatives of those who had died or been injured in Ukraine. He told the father of a serviceman slain in eastern Ukraine later in the day that everything was progressing according to plan and that the “result will be attained.”

Warplanes practised a Z-formation above Red Square ahead of Victory Day, a pattern utilised by the Russian state during its conflict in Ukraine. Smaller parades were held in cities around Russia, and similar flypast cancellations were blamed on the weather in Yekaterinburg, Rostov, and Novosibirsk.

Mariupol, the southern Ukrainian port city where a tiny detachment of Ukrainian military continues to hold out in a complex of tunnels beneath the Azovstal steelworks, was not mentioned in Vladimir Putin’s speech. Russian soldiers, backed by tank and artillery fire, were attempting to overrun the factory, according to Ukrainian officials.

President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Nazis were driven from Ukraine in 1945 and that no one would be able to “annex this triumph” in a separate statement. Ukraine would soon have two victory days to celebrate, he said.

As he attempted to lay a wreath at a military grave in Poland, Russian Ambassador Sergei Andreev was drenched with red paint.

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