Nevertheless, the Kremlin decided to ban marches this year amid fears that family members of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine may seek to participate. This mass participation event, which sees members of the public marching through Russian towns and cities while displaying portraits of family members who served in the Red Army during World War II, has become an integral part of Russia’s Victory Day rituals over the past decade and has been endorsed by Putin himself. The complete cancellation of this year’s Immortal Regiment marches was an even bigger blow. While security concerns were officially cited, these cancellations fueled speculation that Russia simply doesn’t have enough military equipment available to stage regional parades, with the vast majority of tanks and other vehicles having already been sent to Ukraine. In the month preceding the holiday, more than twenty cities across Russia canceled plans to hold military parades. Tuesday’s one-tank parade was the latest in a series of blows that had already cast a shadow over preparations for this year’s Victory Day celebrations. “There are farmers in Ukraine with more tanks than that,” quipped another Twitter user. “There was one tank at the parade in Moscow! We laugh all over Ukraine,” posted Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko. “Modern Russian military equipment can be found much more easily at Ukrainian military trophy exhibitions than at the Victory Parade in Moscow,” noted the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s official Twitter account. Social media was soon buzzing with posts poking fun at the Kremlin. Inevitably, the embarrassing absence of tanks at this year’s Victory Day parade has been widely interpreted as further evidence of Russia’s catastrophic losses in Ukraine. This year, however, the only tank on display was a T-34 model dating back to World War II. For the past two decades, Vladimir Putin has used Victory Day to showcase modern Russia’s resurgence as a military superpower, with dozens of the very latest tanks typically taking part in each annual parade. It would be hard to image a more fitting symbol of Russia’s declining military fortunes than the sight of a solitary Stalin-era tank trundling across Red Square during the country’s traditional Victory Day celebrations on May 9.
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