Victory Day, celebrated on May 9, is Russia’s most important secular holiday, reflecting its wartime sacrifice. But it’s also used by the Kremlin to bolster patriotism and regain the superpower prestige it lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Moscow's grand avenues, like every year in early May, were taken over by the growling of 80-year-old tanks and the smell of gasoline burned by military vehicles. At the turn of the month, Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukraine "cannot be held responsible" for whatever happens during Russian President Vladimir Putin's military spectacle,

Ever since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, the annual military parade to honour the defeat of Nazi Germany have been a shadow of former years. The displays of state-of-the-art tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles in Moscow’s Red Square have gone,