Putin might use the martial pomp of the May 9 ceremony to officially declare Russia is in a state of war and expand military conscription, allowing him to increase his depleted forces that have faced so many struggles on the battlefield.īut analysts said that a mass mobilization of the Russian public, an increase in conscription or a switch to an austere wartime economy would undermine the balance he had struck and bring the reality of war into many more households.

Western and Ukrainian officials had speculated that Mr. Zakharova, called the protesters “admirers of neo-Nazism.’’ A spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Maria V. In Warsaw, protesters chanting “fascists” splashed red liquid on the face of Russia’s ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreev, as he and other Russian diplomats visited a memorial honoring Red Army soldiers killed in World War II.

The Ukrainian military said that the Russian army had deployed 19 battalion tactical groups - each with as many as 1,000 troops - to the Russian border town of Belgorod in preparation for an assault to slow a Ukrainian counteroffensive around Kharkiv and to break through Ukrainian defensive lines elsewhere in the region. After weeks of intense combat, Russia has made only sporadic gains. Together, the speeches showed both leaders digging in for what could be a protracted battle, as Ukrainian troops, armed with heavy weapons supplied by the West, fight Russian forces along a 300-mile front in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Zelensky said as he was shown walking alone through the streets of Kyiv, past government buildings protected with barriers and barbed wire. “On the day of victory over Nazism, we are fighting for a new victory,” Mr. Putin’s claim of purging Nazism to justify the invasion, saying in a video released on Monday that it was the Russian leader who was “repeating the horrific crimes of Hitler’s regime today.” In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected Mr. The independent pollster Levada found last month that 39 percent of Russians were paying little to no attention to what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine. And while Western sanctions have hit Russia’s economy, it has not collapsed, allowing many people to live largely as they had before the Feb. While more than 15,000 Russians were arrested at antiwar protests in the first weeks of the war, the vast majority stayed silent, even if they opposed it.

Pavlovsky said the president seemed keen to avoid doing further damage to the unspoken deal with the Russian people that he fashioned after coming to power: Regular Russians stay out of politics, and the Kremlin largely lets them live their lives. Some analysts say that while polls show broad support in Russia for the war, there appears to be concern in the Kremlin that this support is not deep. Putin’s speech was subdued especially when compared to the fiery rhetoric he has espoused on other occasions in the last two months it was also the speech, of all his recent appearances, that the Russian people were most likely to see, since it came during the televised Victory Day parade, the Russian state’s marquee annual event celebrating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. “He understands that no propaganda can by itself force someone to die.” Putin until falling out with him in 2011, explaining why the Russian leader does not appear ready to order a mass mobilization. “He has developed a certain sense of what is and is not possible,” said Gleb O. Putin made in his speech, in fact, was aimed at assuaging the pain directly caused by the war - a decree to provide additional aid to the children of killed and wounded soldiers. Putin would use the May 9 holiday to double down on the war, he remains cautious about demanding too much from regular Russians. The calibrated tone showed that while some Western officials had predicted Mr.

Victory day turkey 2022