Russia Scales Back Victory Day Celebrations After Alleged Assassination Attempt on Putin

Russia announced on Wednesday that security would be increased across Moscow, and Victory Day celebrations scaled back, due to the possibility of attacks by alleged Ukrainian saboteurs.

Soon after this announcement was made, Russian officials claimed Ukrainian operatives tried to assassinate Vladimir Putin with a drone attack on the Kremlin.

Victory Day, May 9, is a Russian national holiday celebrating victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. It is normally an occasion for nationalist rallies and displays of military strength. In the Russian version of history, Russia defeated Hitler with a minor assist from Europe and the United States.

Putin traditionally uses Victory Day to rally political support and burnish his credentials as the most important Russian leader since Stalin. After he launched his brutal attack on Ukraine, he infused his Victory Day speech with more heated anti-American and anti-European rhetoric, while assailing his Ukrainian adversaries as literal Nazis.

The Kremlin said on Monday that the government would deploy extra security forces to make Red Square safe for the Victory Day military parade, although the event will be closed to civilian spectators this year. It canceled some other commemorations, including the Immortal Regiment procession – a march of civilians who hold photographs and placards with the names of relatives who died in World War II.

Putin and other Russian officials usually join Immortal Regiment marches, having long ago co-opted a tradition that began in 2011 as a genuine grassroots effort by families in Siberia to commemorate the forgotten dead of the world war. This year, the government told citizens to display their photos and placards in house and car windows, hang them on bulletin boards, or post them on websites instead of marching through the streets.

Russian embassies in other countries are still attempting to organize Immortal Regiment processions; the embassy in Kinshasa managed to hold one on Monday with about a hundred participants, implicitly sending the message that Putin’s government thinks the Democratic Republic of Congo is safer for Russian citizens than Moscow at the moment.

Radio Free Europe (RFE) quoted historian Maksim Kuzakhmetov suggesting the highly unusual cancellation of the Immortal Regiment procession has more to do with the Putin regime’s embarrassment over mounting casualties in Ukraine than fears for Russian public safety.

“What if someone comes out carrying portraits of relatives who were killed in the war against Ukraine? What if hundreds of people do? That would be a shock,” Kuzakhmetov said.

“The Kremlin is trying to foster a sense that ‘we will win’, with a smile and laughter, as well as a sense of ‘all for the front,’ and in this regard, the Immortal Regiment can only cause ideological harm,” he said.

Kuzakhmetov also suggested Putin ordered the Red Square parade closed to spectators because he feared an assassination attempt – and he should probably still worry about disgruntled Russian soldiers tucking a “live round” into one of their armored vehicles to use against him.

“Putin sees betrayal everywhere. He is afraid,” the historian said.

Russian political activist Elvira Vikhareva agreed that Putin nixed Immortal Regiment events because he feared they could turn into demonstrations against the massive casualties from his war in Ukraine.

“The regiment would turn out not to be immortal at all but all too mortal. The scale would be evident – the ‘special military operation’ is not being conducted without cost. That is why they canceled it,” she said.

“There is a fear that people will carry portraits of people who have been killed in Ukraine and the real casualty figures – not the ones presented by the Defense Ministry – will be visible. That is the most likely reason. But more generally, the authorities are afraid of any mass demonstration by the people in public. The authorities are obviously afraid,” concurred another historian, Ivan Kurilla.

On Wednesday morning, a Russian official in occupied Crimea blamed a massive fire at a fuel depot located near a strategic bridge to Russia on Ukrainian saboteurs. The official said there were no casualties from the fire, but it was proving to be of “the highest rank of difficulty” to control.

Another Russian official in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Saturday blamed a fire at a fuel storage facility on a Ukrainian drone attack.

Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian governor installed in Sevastopol after Moscow illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014, denounced the strike as a cowardly “sneak attack in the morning” and claimed no major damage occurred, despite a huge column of black smoke rising over the city.

The Ukrainian military attributed the attack to God, who wanted to punish the Russians for a missile strike on Friday that killed dozens of Ukrainian civilians, and said the Almighty was able to inflict considerably more damage on the fuel dump than Razvozhaev was willing to admit. According to the Ukrainians, over 40,000 metric tons of fuel intended for use by the Russian Black Sea fleet were destroyed.

Late on Wednesday morning, Russia claimed Ukrainian assassins attacked the Kremlin itself with drones overnight, in a bid to assassinate Putin. Russian nationalists promptly demanded massive retaliation for the alleged attack, while Ukraine denied the allegations.

“Two unmanned aerial vehicles targeted the Kremlin. Timely action by the military and special services involving radar systems enabled them to disable the devices. They crashed in the Kremlin grounds, scattering fragments without causing any casualties or damage,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

“We view these actions as a planned terrorist attack and an assassination attempt targeting the President, carried out ahead of Victory Day. Russia reserves the right to take countermeasures wherever and whenever it deems appropriate,” the Kremlin said.

Observers in Moscow posted alleged video of something exploding over the Kremlin in the middle of the night, and it does not appear to have been intercepted by anti-aircraft fire. Two people can be seen climbing the stairs atop the Kremlin dome during the incident, but their purpose was unclear:

Ukrainian officials said they had no information about the “so-called night attacks on the Kremlin” and insisted they use “all available forces and means to liberate its own territories, not to attack foreign ones.”

One of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisers said the alleged attack could have been the work of “local resistance forces” unaffiliated with the government in Kyiv, or possibly a false-flag operation that Russia would use to justify a “large-scale terrorist attack” of its own.

Another Zelensky adviser wrote a social media post with fire emojis to celebrate the news, then thought better of it and deleted the post.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was not injured in the attack, he continued with his work schedule uninterrupted, and he still intends to be at the Victory Day parade in Red Square.