Victory Day has long been a show of need, not strength. This year, V. Putin needs leaders to dazzle

Putin’s regime organized a military parade in Moscow to celebrate the victory in the Great Patriotic War. “It was a very well-executed Russian media operation. We saw museum pieces, but there was no state-of-the-art technology,” notes political geographer Mikhail Romantsov. Putin, he says, wanted to show off his great victory.

Moscow is seeing fewer and fewer military vehicles every year. The Russian president is still promising his guests a grand spectacle to distract from the real problems.