Putin’s Victory Day parade was meant to project strength. Instead, missing tanks and empty streets revealed a Russia under pressure from war, economic strain, and growing internal instability. This deep-dive explores how Ukraine reshaped the Kremlin’s plans, why Russia’s elite is losing faith, and how Putin’s leadership faces its greatest challenge in decades. From battlefield losses to political isolation, this is the story of a superpower struggling to maintain the image of invincibility it once used to dominate the world stage.
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00:00On May 9th, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood in Red Square to oversee Russia's Victory Day Parade,
00:07the single most important ritual in the Russian geopolitical calendar.
00:11The ceremony was an attempt to remind the world, and the Russian people above all,
00:16that the nation that helped defeat Nazi Germany had earned its place at the top table of history.
00:21Usually, the tanks would roll and intercontinental ballistic missiles would be proudly showcased
00:27through the square while fighter jets streamed across the sky.
00:30The message was always, we always were and always will be victorious.
00:35Except this year.
00:37In this year's version, there were no tanks, there were no advanced missile systems or heavy military hardware of any
00:44kind on display.
00:45For the first time in the last 20 years of the Victory Day Parade, the armored columns stayed home.
00:51They were simply shown on video because the Kremlin was afraid that Ukrainian drones would destroy them live on television.
00:58Let that sink in for a moment.
01:00The country that kept the world's largest nuclear arsenal on hair-trigger alert for decades
01:05wouldn't roll out its tanks through its own capital city,
01:08all because a country it confidently said it would conquer in a matter of days can now strike Moscow.
01:14Four years ago, Putin's tank crews drove toward Kiev with dress uniforms packed in their kit bags.
01:20They expected a victory parade through the Ukrainian capital within a week.
01:24Today, it's Putin who cannot hold his parade.
01:27But the tanks missing from Red Square are just the most visible symptom of something much deeper.
01:33Right now, behind the facade of state television and carefully staged photo opportunities,
01:38something is breaking inside the Russian system and the Kremlin itself.
01:42The elite is disillusioned, the public is angry, and the economy is cracking.
01:47And Vladimir Putin, the man whose blind ambition started it all,
01:51is increasingly isolated, increasingly lied to, and increasingly unable to stop what he set in motion.
01:58What we are watching, according to some of the most credible Russia watchers in the world,
02:02is the beginning of a geopolitical catastrophe of Putin's own making.
02:07And history tells us that for Russian leaders, catastrophes like this rarely end quietly.
02:12To understand what's happening in Russia right now,
02:15let's delve deeper into how power actually works in Russia.
02:18According to Robert Service, a British historian who wrote extensively on the subject of the Soviet Union,
02:24Russian political legitimacy is not really built on elections or constitutional norms.
02:30Instead, it's built on military glory.
02:33Russians are raised to revere their battlefield history above all else.
02:37Tolstoy's War and Peace is essentially a triatise on Russia's victory over Napoleon.
02:42The Soviet Army's capture of Berlin in 1945 is the foundation of its national identity,
02:48the thing the country reaches for when it needs to remind itself of who it is.
02:52So any Russian leader who wins wars is legitimate, and one who loses them is not.
02:57And if history is any indication, the Russian people move quickly to remove the latter.
03:03Consider Tsar Nicholas II.
03:05He started a war against Japan in 1904, which Russia lost,
03:10and the humiliation cracked the foundations of his rule.
03:13Then came the First World War.
03:15Russia's military was, by 1917, actually performing reasonably well on the Eastern Front.
03:21But the public did not see that.
03:23What they saw was a Tsar who had appointed himself commander-in-chief and presided over
03:27years of slaughter and suffering.
03:29In February 1917, politicians and people turned against him in the capital,
03:34and three centuries of Romanov dynastic rule ended with Nicholas quietly signing an abdication document.
03:40A year later, he was summarily executed.
03:44Putin has an intimate knowledge of Russia's culture and rules for ruling.
03:47In his first years in power, he built legitimacy on the Second Chechen War.
03:52The war started in 1999 while Putin was still prime minister,
03:55and arguably catapulted his career with a Russian victory proclaimed in 2000.
04:00This was followed by the 2008 war in Georgia, a blitzkrieg lasting only five days.
04:06Moving on to Ukraine, Crimea in 2014 was a walkover,
04:09using unmarked soldiers to storm the local center of government,
04:13rush a referendum, and occupy the region before the West could even mount a response.
04:18Putin looked like a decisive leader who acted where his predecessor dithered
04:22and where the West retreated.
04:24The special military operation in Ukraine was supposed to follow the same formula
04:28as the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
04:32Russia would show off its power, plow through Ukraine's defenses,
04:35and remove the center of government in Kyiv.
04:38Tank crews packed their dress uniforms to wear on the supposedly inevitable victory parade in Kyiv.
04:43It's now the fifth year of the war,
04:45and no sensible Russian, whether in the Kremlin or outside it,
04:49imagines it going smoothly.
04:51According to NATO figures from the start of the year,
04:54Russia is incurring between 20,000 and 25,000 casualties every single month.
05:00Another figure from Ukraine suggests Russia is losing at least 1,000 soldiers per day,
05:05extrapolating to around 30,000 per month.
05:07In total, Russia has been estimated to have incurred over 1.2 million casualties
05:12with at least 300,000 deaths.
05:15The manpower deficiency created by the war has been severe enough that,
05:19in November 2025,
05:21Putin signed a law enabling the Russian Defense Ministry
05:24to conduct conscription throughout the year,
05:26rather than in the seasonal drafts that have been standard practice.
05:30Surprisingly, we've been at that point before.
05:32Putin already knew what he'd signed up for when he attempted a partial mobilization in the autumn of 2022.
05:38Hundreds of thousands of Russian men fled the country rather than being called up.
05:42The mere concept of a mass exodus of such proportions was deeply embarrassing
05:46for a government projecting an image of national unity and patriotic fervor.
05:50Hence, the government began cracking down on dissent
05:53and any opinions that didn't paint Russia as a surefire winner.
05:56And the new year-round conscription law will be worse.
05:59The early immobilization waves drew heavily from poorer regions,
06:03rural communities, and ethnic minority areas away from the capital.
06:07In these places, the military pay was heralded as a genuine lifeline,
06:11considering that some figures proposed the yearly wage plus sign-on bonuses
06:15to be up to four times the national average.
06:18This was a grim calculation on the Kremlin's part,
06:21and for a while it worked,
06:22in the sense that it kept the war away from the Moscow dinner table.
06:25But that pool of recruits is running dry,
06:27and now the draft could reach into parts of Russian society
06:30that have, until this point, been largely insulated from it.
06:34Young men in the urban class in Moscow and St. Petersburg
06:37who want nothing to do with this war.
06:39This will upend the tenuous social contract
06:42that Putin maintained throughout the past four years.
06:44So long as you pay taxes and stay in line with propaganda,
06:47the war won't come for you.
06:49The taxes have increased, the propaganda is slowing down,
06:52and Ukraine has slowly managed to penetrate deeper into Russia's territory.
06:55There is another dimension to the military picture
06:58that is arguably more alarming than the casualty figures,
07:01and it goes to the heart of how Putin is making decisions.
07:04Multiple sources with access to the Russian leadership have confirmed
07:08that Putin has told his inner circle he believes he can capture the entirety of the Donbass
07:12by the end of 2026.
07:14And much like with the start of the war,
07:17it seems Putin genuinely appears to believe his claim.
07:20Ukrainian intelligence officials have a different explanation for why he believes it.
07:24They believe his generals are lying to him,
07:27with fabricated reports being fed up the chain of command,
07:29claiming victory is imminent.
07:31This is not a new phenomenon in Russian military culture.
07:35But just a continuation of what we've seen.
07:37In 2024, commanders were removed from their posts for doing the same,
07:41but chances are they weren't the only ones
07:43and could have been scapegoats for the real falsifiers.
07:46Even if many around Putin understand the reality of the situation,
07:50it's not clear what Putin himself knows and understands.
07:53So Russia now has a leader making strategic decisions
07:56based on falsified intelligence reports,
07:59surrounded by subordinates too afraid to tell him the truth,
08:02prosecuting a war that is consuming 30,000 of his soldiers per month.
08:06It's no wonder the victory parade in 2026 looked like anything but.
08:10Beyond military losses, Russia's economy and social dynamics
08:14are under increasing pressure.
08:15The civilian economy has been starved by wartime priorities for four years now,
08:20and the strain is becoming impossible to ignore.
08:23In 2026, there have been higher taxes and rising inflation.
08:27All the while, the government is allocating roughly 40% of the budget
08:31to war-related spending.
08:32The country has announced it expects a GDP growth of only 0.4% this year,
08:38against the more optimistic 1.3% prediction.
08:40It has also run out of workers, with only a 2.1% unemployment rate.
08:45But while that figure might sound promising under ordinary scenarios,
08:49it's different for a country that has spent the last four years in war.
08:52An unemployment figure as low as this suggests that Russian companies
08:55have no unemployed people to find.
08:57Pitted against one another, businesses advertise higher wages,
09:00where the costs are passed on to the consumer,
09:03that consumer being the Russian citizen.
09:05So Russian workers are caught in a loop where they nominally earn more money
09:08on account of being able to pick their job,
09:10only to have to pay more to live.
09:12The social consequences also show up in the data.
09:14Russia's General Happiness Index fell to a 15-year low in April 2026,
09:19according to a state pollster.
09:21Curiously, the last time the index was this low
09:23was when Putin was set to become president for the second time in 2011,
09:27replacing his deputy Medvedev.
09:30Putin's approval rating has fallen to its lowest point
09:33since the start of the full-scale invasion.
09:35Then there's the geopolitical dimension behind Russia's situation
09:38and lack of progress, which is a double-edged sword for its economy.
09:42But before we continue, make sure to subscribe to The Military Show.
09:45We post videos covering the latest military developments,
09:48geopolitics, and global conflicts.
09:51President Donald Trump's confrontation with Iran,
09:53which led to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz,
09:55prompted the United States to lift some of its sanctions on Russia,
09:59selling oil to India.
10:00This was a significant windfall that has added more than $100 million per day
10:04to Putin's tax revenues.
10:06That money buys weapons, parts, technology,
10:09and most importantly, continues Chinese political support.
10:12But $100 million a day in oil revenue doesn't bring down inflation.
10:16When Trump came into power, Putin believed that Trump would fully side with Russia.
10:20Early negotiations were focused on Trump trying to force Ukraine to accept an agreement
10:25that would have it cede the occupied territory for no return.
10:28Not only did that attempt fail,
10:30but Trump has publicly withdrawn from negotiating between Russia and Ukraine,
10:34leaving the former with only China at its side,
10:37and the latter with most of Western Europe,
10:39which has correctly identified that Ukraine is Russia's first stop
10:42in trying to reclaim lost Soviet territory on the continent,
10:45and went full steam ahead with collaborative projects and military donations.
10:49So any leverage that Putin thought he had with Trump is now gone,
10:53while Ukraine has drastically reduced its dependence on assistance from the US itself.
10:57And if the economic pressure doesn't cause Russia to collapse,
11:00the information crackdown just might.
11:02In late summer 2025, the Kremlin started promoting MAX,
11:06a Russian-made alternative to Telegram,
11:08which was arguably already considered a social media network
11:12dominated by Russian speakers.
11:13The new network provided seemingly no barriers
11:16to Federal Security Service investigators,
11:18so using it meant the FSB could see what you write.
11:22Switching to MAX was basically asking the civilians and military
11:25to open surveillance on themselves.
11:27The backlash has been thorough,
11:30with strategic bloggers suggesting that this could collapse frontline command
11:33due to the app's lack of basic security features.
11:36Mere months after the promotion,
11:38the government reversed course,
11:39citing the so-called lack of security as the main reason.
11:43One Kremlin insider described dinner party conversation in the Kremlin
11:46as dominated by a single subject, the internet.
11:50They suggested that the way Russia is going,
11:52it's going to start looking more like North Korea.
11:54This is particularly noteworthy,
11:56since Russia has, for the past decade,
11:58been trying to emulate China's system of internet controls.
12:01The journalist Ksenia Sobchak,
12:03who is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak,
12:05the St. Petersburg mayor who was Putin's early political mentor,
12:08told The Guardian that she believes it's only a matter of time
12:11before Russian authorities move to block
12:14all Western social media platforms entirely.
12:16However, unlike China,
12:18where the internet is monitored,
12:19but at least works consistently,
12:21Russia can't properly monitor its citizens,
12:23nor can it provide stable connections.
12:25Case in point,
12:26businesses complained that they kept losing broadband,
12:29to which the government responded
12:30that it was trying to shut down internet access
12:32for vital targets to improve security,
12:34i.e. make them less susceptible to drone tracking.
12:37Regardless of its success,
12:38this looks to be the intended trajectory
12:40of domestic affairs for Russia,
12:41where the information space will get progressively more sealed,
12:44and each ceiling generates a new wave of anger.
12:47The public will either try to go around the restriction
12:49or fully buy into the government's propaganda,
12:52leading to the media and schooling systems
12:54becoming increasingly militant
12:55and on par with the Soviet regime.
12:57And we all know how it ended for the Soviets.
13:00The clearest picture of where things stand
13:02comes from Putin's inner circle,
13:03where the winds of fortune have shifted.
13:06The Guardian,
13:06citing interviews with multiple people
13:08in the orbit of the Russian leadership
13:09and prominent officials,
13:11has painted Putin as an isolated leader
13:13surrounded by an elite
13:14that is becoming rapidly disillusioned.
13:17Of course,
13:17they're not openly plotting for the change of government,
13:20as none of them would survive such an act.
13:22There are talks of a loss of faith
13:23in the current Russian leader,
13:25and that loss is basically translating
13:27to the slow degradation of the country's authoritarian rule.
13:30Putin has seemingly become aware of the narrative circulating
13:33about his state of mind and leadership capabilities.
13:36A European intelligence report,
13:38shared with several outlets in early May
13:40and reportedly produced by a European country,
13:43claimed that security measures around Putin
13:44had been significantly tightened since March
13:47over fears of a possible plot or coup attempt,
13:49and suggested that the former defense minister,
13:51Sergei Shoigu,
13:52could emerge as a threat.
13:54A week after those reports circulated,
13:56the Kremlin released a carefully produced video
13:58of Putin visiting his former schoolteacher,
14:00Vera Gorevich,
14:01in central Moscow.
14:03The Putin in the video appeared relaxed,
14:05wearing what could amount to casual clothing,
14:07as if to purposefully dispel the notion
14:09that he was hiding in a bunker.
14:11But the staging itself speaks to the pressure.
14:13After 25 years in power,
14:15the Kremlin feels compelled to release footage
14:17of Putin buying flowers to prove he's not afraid.
14:19The government has also debunked the Shoigu scenario
14:23by arresting several officials
14:24close to the former defense minister
14:26and thus further isolating him from Putin's inner circle.
14:29Most analysts now believe
14:31that if a real threat to Putin's rule emerges,
14:33it will come from within his inner circle.
14:35This will be someone with access,
14:37with institutional support,
14:39and with the conviction that the current trajectory
14:41is genuinely catastrophic.
14:43A personal group doesn't seem to exist
14:45or to have emerged yet,
14:47and Russia's ruling and oligarch classes
14:49seemingly suffer from what could be called
14:51the dissolution of responsibility.
14:53Everyone is afraid of Putin,
14:55and nobody trusts him.
14:56The Russian president has also spent
14:58the better part of three decades
15:00dismantling the upper class
15:01to fill it with an elite
15:02that is fully subservient to him.
15:04Nobody actually wants to make the first move.
15:07Instead, the oligarchs are hiding
15:09either within Russia
15:10or completely out of the country,
15:12waiting for the shoe to drop
15:13and for someone else to dismantle
15:14Russia's current regime.
15:16But the people who arguably
15:17have the means and opportunity
15:18to make changes are paralyzed,
15:20watching the country's economy
15:21sink into oblivion.
15:23Even if we set aside everything else,
15:25the casualties,
15:26the conscription crises,
15:27the economic pressure,
15:28the information crackdown,
15:30the elite disillusionment,
15:31there is the geopolitical dimension
15:32of the war in Ukraine
15:33and its current trajectory.
15:35Robert Service,
15:36remember he's one of Britain's
15:37foremost experts on Soviet history
15:39and geopolitics,
15:40called Putin's invasion of Ukraine
15:42a gigantic geopolitical blunder,
15:44and he is far from the only one.
15:46Consider what Russia had
15:47and what Putin chose to do with it.
15:49Russia in the early 2010s
15:51was an energy superpower,
15:52with a seat at every major
15:54international table,
15:55a functional relationship with Europe
15:57and the option to play China
15:58and the United States
15:59off against each other
16:00to Moscow's advantage.
16:01Instead, Putin chose to cut ties
16:03with the West,
16:04to invade a neighbor
16:05and to transform Russia
16:06from an indispensable player
16:07into a geopolitical pariah
16:09dependent on Chinese patronage
16:11and Iranian drones.
16:12And even if peace comes on terms
16:14the Kremlin can present
16:15as acceptable,
16:16one where Putin can claim
16:17he fulfilled the ambitious
16:18objectives from 2022,
16:20permanent damage has already
16:22been done to Russia's
16:23geopolitical standing.
16:24NATO has expanded
16:25to include Finland and Sweden,
16:27doubling its land border
16:28with Russia
16:29and absorbing two countries
16:30that could further strangle
16:31Russia's naval access
16:32in the Baltic Sea.
16:34European defense spending
16:35has exploded,
16:36with countries across the continent
16:38finally meeting NATO's requirements
16:39of 2% of GDP.
16:41where its biggest economy
16:42promised it would go up
16:43to 3.5% of GDP
16:45with collaborative
16:46and infrastructure efforts.
16:47Four years after being battered
16:49by drones, missiles, and tanks,
16:51Ukraine has emerged
16:52as a battle-hardened military force
16:54with deep ties to Western intelligence
16:55and defense industries.
16:57Conversely, Russia's reputation
16:59as a military power
17:00to be feared
17:00has been degraded
17:02to the point where it barely
17:03has any buyers of its equipment,
17:04that is, even if it had any equipment
17:06to spare to sell.
17:07And remember,
17:08it's been suggested multiple times
17:10that Putin considered Ukraine
17:11only the start.
17:12When the war began,
17:14analysts thought
17:14he'd take over
17:15the collapsing Ukraine,
17:16then move on
17:17to a full conflict
17:17with NATO back in 2025.
17:19That timeline then moved
17:21to 2027,
17:22then only vaguely
17:23to within the next couple
17:24of years after the war.
17:26Today, it's unclear
17:27whether Russia could even
17:28mount an assault
17:29on another nation.
17:30Regardless of reality,
17:31Putin's aggressiveness
17:32doesn't seem to have abated.
17:34He has spent a quarter
17:35of a century
17:35constructing an image
17:36of himself
17:37as the man
17:38who restored Russia's dignity,
17:39who speaks truth
17:40to Western hypocrisy,
17:41and at 73,
17:43he's starting to look older.
17:45The image is beginning to crack.
17:47The ruler who delivered stability
17:48after the unsteady 1990s
17:50has thrown that legacy away.
17:52So where does it end?
17:53The honest answer
17:54is that no one knows,
17:55including the people
17:56closest to the Russian leadership.
17:58What the spring of 2026
17:59makes clear
18:00is that the war in Ukraine
18:01is poised to go on
18:02for at least the remainder of 2026.
18:05Meanwhile,
18:06Russia will need to survive
18:07its cascade of domestic pressures,
18:09a generation of casualties,
18:11an economy bent out of shape,
18:12an information space
18:14sealed against reality,
18:15and an elite
18:16that sits at dinner tables
18:17discussing how much
18:18Russia resembles North Korea.
18:20If you found this video valuable,
18:22subscribe to The Military Show
18:24for more in-depth analysis
18:25of the conflicts
18:26and forces shaping the world.
18:27And if you want to go deeper
18:29on how exactly Russia's military
18:30has collapsed
18:31to have caused this,
18:32check this video out
18:34and thank you,
18:35as always,
18:36for watching.
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