To mark the 72nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, Russia mounted one of the largest Red Square displays of military might in many years. It included mobile missile systems adapted for Arctic warfare, a reminder that the country is building new bases in its far North.
Putin reviewed the parade of soldiers, sailors and military hardware without the gaggle of grim-faced old men in trilbies and fur hats that characterized the politburo of Soviet times. But the Russian leader was suitably somber when he said that Russia had to be able to defend itself against outside aggression. That message still carries huge significance for ordinary Russians, even though the generation that fought against the Nazi invasion is now fast dying out. More than 20 million Russians died in what they know as the Great Patriotic War. That butcher’s bill was by far the highest faced by any country in the course of the conflict.
Putin’s message was as clear as he meant it to be. The humiliated Russia of the Yeltsin years with its crumbling nuclear bunkers, its rusting Black Sea Fleet and ill-equipped and poorly motivated army is in the past. Putin said publicly last fall when the then Italian premier Matteo Renzi visited Moscow that there was still only one superpower and that was the United States. He also insisted that he had no preference for the White House winner. He would work with either.
He welcomed Trump’s campaign pledge of better Russian relations. However, it should not be forgotten that Putin had heard such talk before by a new president. From the Kremlin’s point of view, Barack Obama’s promise to hit the reset button with Russia never happened maybe because, as with Obama’s Cairo speech on the Middle East, the buttons were not connected to anything at all.
Putin has crushed internal opposition and survived the economic sanctions that followed his seizure of Crimea and his sponsorship of dissident ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. His economy is hurting because of weak oil prices but ordinary Russians have been through far worse. Their ability to let off steam by grumbling has always been an important safety valve. They like strong leadership and that is what they have in Vladimir Putin, a political showman who gives no quarter when he is questioned.
Though it may be diminishing, Russians also see Donald Trump as a strongman though they probably do not appreciate the near impossible challenge the new US president faces in trying to tackle the Deep State on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon. Trump’s decisive action in Syria following Assad’s latest gassing of his people will have surprised but not necessarily displeased the Kremlin. It probably had the effect of putting the Assad dictatorship more deeply into the hands of Russian policymakers.
A rapprochement between two of the world’s three leading military powers is still not impossible. But Putin needs to make sure that a de-escalation in tensions between Moscow and Washington takes place on as many of his terms as possible - including the easing of economic sanctions. But he also wants to prove that his expanded defensive posture is not a direct threat to US interests. Perhaps that is why all of the troops that marched past him this week in Red Square had sweet smiles nailed to their faces.
