On the morning of May 7, Moscow’s mayor said the Russian air force had shot down hundreds of Ukrainian drones aimed at the city, turning the capital’s run-up to Victory Day into a security scare. Moscow was due to host Russia’s annual May 9 military parade two days later, and for the first time in years the war that Vladimir Putin has waged abroad felt close enough to unsettle the city itself.
The parade is not just a ceremony on the Kremlin calendar. It is intimately tied to Putin, who revived the Soviet-era celebration of Stalin’s victory over Nazi Germany and his conquest of Europe, and Russian officials looked nervous that it could be spoiled. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned there would be “no mercy” if Ukrainians struck the parade, while the Kremlin’s spokesperson said security was tight because the “threat from the Kyiv regime” had already been taken into account.
Putin had already maneuvered to keep the event on track. He persuaded the American president to ask Volodymyr Zelensky for a one-day cease-fire, and Zelensky granted the request after Trump offered to broker an exchange of 1,000 prisoners of war. Zelensky then issued a decree formally granting Putin permission to hold the parade, a strange diplomatic detour that underscored how much was riding on a few hours in central Moscow.
For Muscovites, the tension was not abstract. Cellphone coverage had become unreliable, and at times nonexistent, while ride apps stopped working and many physical systems, including ATMs, failed when public internet access dropped away. In April, the state cut access in Russia to the Russian-built app Telegram and to many VPNs, adding another layer of disconnection on top of high inflation and high interest rates. The problems had already made daily life harder before the drone scare, but the announcement on May 7 made the sense of siege impossible to miss.
Russia had been vulnerable in Moscow before. Four years ago, on May 3, 2023, the first two Ukrainian drones to reach the city exploded over the Kremlin and caused no damage. During Yevgeny Prigozhin’s very short rebellion later in 2023, Muscovites were told to stay home for fear of violence. This time, for the past several days before the parade, residents were once again on high alert, and according to a diplomat known to the author, snipers were visible in and around Red Square.
That is what makes the May 9 parade so uneasy this year. Moscow is still standing, but the city is no longer insulated from the war it is meant to celebrate, and Putin’s war comes home to Moscow just as the Kremlin tries to project calm in the center of its own pageantry.
