Putin’s Potemkin Red Square

Vladimir Putin moved through Red Square with the visible caution of a man who knows he no longer stands at a helm of the state the world fears, but instead leads an exhausted system struggling to survive its own lies. The man who went to war convinced he would crush Ukraine in a few days now appears as a tired and paranoid old man trying to maintain the illusion of grandeur. Make us preferred on Google Flip Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Russian President Vladimir Putin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev attend a ceremony to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall in central Moscow on May 9, 2026. Russia celebrates the 81st anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two (WWII). (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / POOL / AFP) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google No intelligence service, NATO report, or Western analysis has exposed the true state of Russia today as clearly as this year’s May 9 parade in Moscow. The Kremlin attempted to stage a demonstration of force, but instead produced something grotesque. It resembled late-Soviet political reenactments – ceremonies where everyone knows the system is collapsing, yet protocol is still followed because no one has the courage to stand up and walk away. That was the main impression from Red Square – not grandeur and power, but the exhaustion of a regime with nothing to show except its past. Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . On May 9, Russia resembled a once-grand aristocratic family still hosting lavish receptions in a house from which the silverware, paintings, and piano had long been sold, while the host persistently assured the guests that everything was under control and that the “temporary difficulties” would soon be over. Vladimir Putin played his role in that spectacle as an aging authoritarian ruler who, through the war in Ukraine, managed to accomplish what the West could not achieve for decades: dismantling with his own hands the myth of Russia as an unstoppable force. That is his historical legacy. Before February 2022, much of the world regarded Russia as a military power around which Europe’s security architecture was built. For years, Western analyses, political assessments, and military plans were based on the assumption that Moscow possessed an army capable of rapid and devastating operations against almost any adversary on the European continent. Fear of Russia was one of the most important instruments of Russian power. Other Topics of Interest Swedish Intelligence Suspects Two of Exporting Industrial Products to Russia Sweden’s security service Swedish Security Service (Sapo) has arrested two suspects accused of evading sanctions by exporting advanced industrial goods to Russia’s military sector. Authorities conducted raids across Sweden. The alleged offences span June 2025–May 2026, with charges expected by June 5 as the investigation intensifies. Ukraine shattered that mechanism more precisely than any sanctions or diplomatic isolation. The world saw Russian columns destroyed near Kyiv. It saw an army fighting a grueling war for a few kilometers of territory over four years. It saw a state buying drones from Iran, ammunition from North Korea, and electronic components through Chinese intermediaries, all while trying to play the role of a geopolitical power in Europe. That is why this year’s parade felt so uncomfortable for the Kremlin. Behind all the staging, it became impossible to hide the gap between propaganda and reality. The best symbol of this was a single T-34. The Kremlin wanted that tank to represent the continuity of historic victory and Russian grandeur. In reality, it symbolized a state that no longer has enough modern equipment to organize its own propaganda spectacle without relying on museum exhibits. A war intended to showcase Russia’s renewed power has instead led Moscow to drive a World War II tank across Red Square, while modern technology is destroyed in Ukrainian fields. This is not a demonstration of power; it is an attempt to mask strategic exhaustion with historical symbolism. The view at the podium spoke almost as eloquently as the military parade itself. Alexander Lukashenko, who long ago stopped leading his country and accepted the role of the Kremlin’s political inventory – a figure brought out when needed so Putin can show he still has someone who comes to him willingly. Robert Fico appeared in Moscow not as a statesman changing European politics, but as a political smuggler of cheap defiance – loud enough to seem “sovereign” at home, but too insignificant to be more than a useful extra in another Putin show at the Kremlin. Thongloun Sisoulith, president of Laos, is a geopolitical figure from Southeast Asia whose presence primarily served as visual evidence that Russia is “not alone.” His arrival on Red Square carried about as much geopolitical significance as an amateur theater troupe at the Oscars. Sultan Ibrahim of Malaysia was likely the only man in the podium who appeared to attend out of diplomatic curiosity – to see firsthand what an empire looks like when it is shrinking faster than a wool sweater washed in near-boiling water. Leaders Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan and Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan acted like company managers searching for a new investor while checking whether the old one was still breathing. Milorad Dodik, leader of BiH-Republika Srpska offered perhaps the saddest proof of how much Putin’s political horizon has narrowed. The man who once wanted to decide the fate of Europe now receives and parades with a politician from an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina who holds no state office, as if it were a meeting of great international significance. And then there were the North Korean extras. For the first time, soldiers marched on Moscow’s asphalt who now practically serve as human currency with which Kim Jong Un pays for Russian oil and grain. Their presence is perhaps the final proof of how the “second army of the world” has declined – to the point where a nuclear power with imperial ambitions is importing human flesh from the darkest corners of the planet to sustain a war that was supposed to last only a few weeks. That scene perhaps best illustrates where Putin’s Russia stands today. The former superpower now highlights military cooperation with Kim Jong Un’s regime as proof of international influence. The state that spent decades trying to persuade the world that it offered a civilizational alternative to the West is now militarily dependent on one of the poorest and most isolated dictatorships in the world. If someone had told Soviet generals during the Cold War that Moscow would one day display North Korean soldiers on Red Square as a symbol of international support, they would have ended up under KGB surveillance for spreading hostile propaganda. Today, this is the political reality of the Russian Federation. A particular irony is that this year’s parade went relatively smoothly because Kyiv chose not to escalate military operations against Moscow that day. Volodymyr Zelensky issued a presidential decree that effectively “allowed” the central Russian state ceremony to proceed without Ukrainian strikes. It is hard to imagine a more brutal illustration of the shifting balance of power. The state that planned to destroy Ukraine now depends on Ukraine’s decision about whether its most important state ceremony will be turned into chaos and panic. This is precisely where the full extent of Putin’s historic failure becomes clear. His goal was not only territorial expansion; he aimed to restore the Russian imperial psychology and return to a time when Europe adjusted its security policy to Moscow out of fear. Instead, the war against Ukraine produced the exact opposite effect. In the past four years, Ukraine has achieved what no Western containment strategy has accomplished since the end of the Cold War. It shattered the myth on which the Kremlin built its international influence – not only militarily, but also psychologically and politically. Ukraine demonstrated that the Russian army is not an unstoppable force, but a system burdened by corruption, poor logistics, miscalculations, and a brutal reliance on quantity over quality. It proved that Russia can be stopped, exhausted, and humiliated. This is why Ukrainian resistance today holds far greater significance than the defense of territory alone. Ukraine was not only defending its own country; it destroyed the political image of Russia on which the Kremlin based decades of fear, blackmail, and influence over Europe. Perhaps that is why Vladimir Putin moved through Red Square on Saturday with the visible caution of a man who knows he no longer stands at a helm of the state the world fears, but instead leads an exhausted system struggling to survive its own lies. The man who went to war convinced he would crush Ukraine in a few days now appears as a tired and paranoid old man trying to maintain the illusion of grandeur for a state whose real limits of power were shattered in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin went to war four years ago to restore Russia as a power the world fears. On Red Square, he looked like an aging ruler desperately trying to preserve the performance of power while his army is being depleted in Ukraine, the economy is collapsing, allies have been reduced to political extras, international reputation is confined to Tehran and Pyongyang, and the country increasingly resembles a weary nuclear power living on Soviet memories and propaganda. Perhaps this is the Kremlin’s ultimate humiliation. The war that was supposed to frighten Europe ended with Ukraine shattering the myth before the entire world, leaving Russia unsure how to even appear as a great power. The man who wanted to reshape the world’s borders ended up hosting the saddest gathering, where the main attraction was an old T-34 tank, as lonely as his politics. That is the real picture of Russia in 2026: plenty of history, no future, and guests who stay only until the bill arrives. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post. Dr. Orhan Dragaš is a Serbian expert on security and international relations. He is the founder and director of the International Security Institute, based in Belgrade; author of numerous expert articles, newspaper columns, as well as the books "The modern intelligence-security community, utopia or reality"; and; "Two faces of globalization – truth and deceptions."