Russian President Vladimir Putin’s much-anticipated Victory Day speech did not include any announcement of victory in Ukraine or any declarations of further troop mobilizations despite concerns from the West.
Western officials had expressed concerns that the Russian military would try to secure a victory in Ukraine to tout on Monday, May 9, which is when the Kremlin commemorates Russia’s role in defeating Nazi Germany, but that did not come to fruition when Putin addressed his country from Moscow.
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The Russian president spoke for roughly 10 minutes at the military parade, where he defended Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine by blaming the West for creating “threats” at Russia’s doorstep that he said justified actions much of the West has alleged constitute war crimes.
IN VICTORY DAY SPEECH, PUTIN SEEKS RUSSIAN UNITY FOR LONG-TERM STRUGGLE AGAINST WEST
Putin opted not to push the envelope with his speech, at least in part due to the Russian military’s failures in the war and because he’s “probably fearful of the potential domestic consequences both because mobilization would be, you know, politically unpopular,” John Hardie, a senior research analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner.
A senior U.S. defense official said Monday, “I would not characterize it as successful, not at all,” when asked to characterize the Russian military’s status in the Donbas. “They really haven’t achieved any significant progress on the lines of axes that they had anticipated achieving in the northern Donbas.”
Russia is also still facing many of the same problems that plagued its troops from the beginning of the military invasion, which began Feb. 24. This now includes “anecdotal reports” that “mid-grade officers at various levels, even up to the battalion level” have “either refused to obey orders or are not obeying them with the same measure of alacrity that you would expect an officer to obey,” the official said.
Matt Kroenig, a professor at Georgetown University, told the Washington Examiner that “the main reason” Putin expanded the scope of the war was because “he has his hands full already” in the Donbas and said it would have been “biting off more than he can chew.”
The “big news” from Putin’s speech was “that there’s no news, and that’s good,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner, adding that Putin “passed up an opportunity to escalate the conflict,” but he “didn’t know about an olive branch either.”
Putin didn’t make any of the proclamations the United States was concerned about because it would’ve entailed him changing “a major part of his narrative about the war,” Cancian said. The Russian leader claimed in the speech that NATO and the West are creating “threats next to our borders” and “preparing for the invasion of our land.”
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U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan offered his opinion on Putin’s speech during a CNN interview.
“President Putin couldn’t declare victory because even the Russian propaganda machine couldn’t back that one up. We have seen time after time Russia’s goals in Ukraine thwarted, starting with their attempted lightning strike on Kyiv,” he said. “It shows at a minimum the Russian government [and] senior leaders’ willingness to say anything to justify the unjustifiable, which is their aggressive war in Ukraine, and that is slaughtering innocents across the besieged country, atrocities that are hard to comprehend.”
