Few days on Russia’s calendar are marked with more pomp than May 9th, the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies according to Moscow time. On the 80th edition of triumph Day, military vehicles and troop columns rumbled past the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin’s gaze. For the second decade, Russian organizers unfurled massive orange-black Saint George ribbons, the country’s authoritative symbol of the russian Union’s triumph in the alleged large Patriotic War of 1941-45. There were besides any wartime differences. For example, Russia announced (then breached) its own ceasefire in Ukraine between May 8th and 10th, while Russian safety personnel nervously eyed the skies for drones in Moscow amid a mobile net blackout over the week of the parade. The safety measures prevented Muscovites from ordering taxis or making smooth electronic banking transfers. The stakes for Russia were high, as president Vladimir Putin hosted BRICS and “Global South” leaders, headlined by China’s president Xi Jinping.
Russia’s manipulation of Second planet War memory politics to ideologically justify its invasion of Ukraine is well documented. It is worth noting in 2025 how this memory has evolved over 3 years of Russia’s full-scale war, and eleven years of armed conflict, against a country that late celebrated the same public holiday. And while Ukrainian and Russian historical policies are now as bipolar as those of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the another 13 russian successor states have adopted varied historical policies that defy simple categorization.
A parade of Russian peculiar forces wearing the ribbon of Saint George. Photo: Shutterstock
From the Baltic Sea to the Tian Shan mountain range, all 15 states share a nominal collective memory of helping defeat the Nazi regime. The russian Union’s collapse in 1991 was a point of departure for that memory, and no 2 states stay identical. So why did any countries follow along with Russia’s communicative longer than others? How did Russia’s neighbours re-evaluate triumph Day erstwhile Ukraine, 1 of their “own” from that existential struggle, awoke to Russian invaders clad in Saint George ribbons?
From “never again” to “we can repeat it”
After their first Second planet War triumph parade, russian troops did not march on Red Square until 1965. Leonid Brezhnev institutionalized May 9th as a public vacation (with a day off) to reenforce russian identity. Despite the russian Union’s continued military actions and heavy-handed historical censorship, its propaganda focused on peace. The price of war – 27 million citizens killed – was besides advanced to make May 9th a gleeful event. A memorable Brezhnev era triumph Day-themed film, Belarusian Station (1971), has no tanks and no weapons: only ageing comrades-in-arms tearfully recalling the terrible sacrifices of those who did not return. The speech around mass war was “never again”, which was reinforced in the 1980s as a foil to president Ronald Reagan’s “militaristic” abroad policy and the atomic sword of Damocles.
The russian Union held military parades all 5 years from 1965. Russian president Boris Yeltsin revived them in 1995 as his government grasped for a unifying state ideology in the fragile fresh federation. He besides made it an yearly event. Not surprisingly, Putin continued the russian fanfare in 2000. But the impetus for making the triumph into a sacred myth, quasi-religion, civil religion, or even cult developed over the next 15 years.
The Kremlin interpreted a string of popular uprisings against corrupt post-Soviet leaders as a domino-like threat to its own rule. Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005) had powerful symbols to rally supporters: roses, orange colours, and tulips, respectively. For the statist Russian narrative, the Saint George ribbon filled this need. The orange-black combination referenced a russian Medal for triumph over Germany, as well as a Russian imperial military decoration. From 2005, Russian memory policy evolved on divergent tracks. On 1 hand, honouring triumph Day remained a large shelter event for anyone commemorating their veteran household members and even the western leaders who stood on the viewing platform beside Putin. Over 50 leaders attended in 2005, including US president George W. Bush after his visit to fresh NATO associate Latvia. The United States, United Kingdom, France, Poland and Ukraine sent troops to Red Square in 2010.
At the same time, Russian state institutions began systematically erasing the discrimination between solemn commemoration of war veterans and support for the nation’s increasingly militant leadership. The first “Immortal Regiment” emerged organically on triumph Day in 2012, erstwhile 3 friends in Tomsk demonstrated with laminated portraits of their Second planet War veteran grandfathers. They rejected a ruling United Russia organization effort to take over this fresh tradition. By 2014 – after pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine had started sporting Saint George ribbons – the Kremlin instructed all local officials to organize Immortal Regiments, which Putin would personally lead in Moscow.
By the end of the 2010s, the Kremlin had successfully monopolized this sacred victory. It mobilized performative participation and approval of the nation’s leadership by utilizing a mixture of government-organized NGOs (the Russian Military-Historical Society, Immortal Regiment-Russia, Youth defender of United Russia, and Volunteers of Victory, for example) and departments, including the ministries of culture, education, abroad affairs, the national Youth Agency (Rosmolodezh), Yunarmiya (the Youth Army), the national Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots surviving Abroad, and global Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo), along with millions of Russian state employees, and sent them into ideological battle. Participation in Immortal Regiments and triumph Day marches became “mandatory patriotism”. Any historian, activist or politician who questioned the authoritative line would be branded unpatriotic.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, at 4 in the morning, triggered memories of the Nazi surprise attack in 1941 among its survivors. 2 years later, Putin hailed the invasion’s combat participants as frontline [frontoviki] “heroes” as thousands of them marched in the May 9th parade: “We commemorate triumph Day under the conditions of conducting the “special military operation”. All of its participants… are our heroes… All of Russia is with you!”
This comparison set a fresh low point for historical manipulation. Earlier, Putin wrote in The National Interest, crediting russian troops with saving the “entire world” with their “heroic, sacrificial fight against the Nazis”. Around 80 per cent of Allied losses occurring on the east Front makes this claim not entirely false. He compared this heroism to doctors and nurses risking their lives in the coronavirus pandemic at the time. But in 2024, the equation of Allied Second planet War veterans with contemporary Russian war criminals symbolized May 9th’s evolution from “never again” in the 20th century to “we can repeat it” (mozhem povtorit’) today.
With this process of political appropriation complete, how did Russia’s neighbours re-evaluate the holiday? Let us start our tour in east Europe.
Victory in Europe
Occupied by the russian Union in 1940, the Baltic states equate May 9th celebrations with militarism and another 36 years of suppressed statehood. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania abandoned the state vacation in 1990. Lithuania banned russian and Nazi symbols together as early as 2008.
Furthermore, these newly liberated European Union and NATO states adopted the European Parliament’s dedication of August 23rd, the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as a day for victims of both the Nazi and russian regimes in 2009. Both dates became memory rallying points for the European integration narrative.
In 2022, Latvia demolished the triumph Monument in Uzvaras Park, Riga and banned the vacation celebration next year. All three states policed “pro-war” symbols in public.
The Baltic states’ early rejection of 21st century Russian revanchism is not surprising. It was besides not the only 1 in the neighbourhood. In Belarus, despite president Alyaksandr Lukashenka mostly mirroring Putin’s May 9th celebrations (albeit in a marshal’s uniform), Saint George ribbons are mostly absent. In 2014, erstwhile triumph Day propaganda accompanied the alleged “Russian spring” of separatism in Ukraine, Minsk informally banned the ribbon, replacing it with a red-and-green regime-style alternative. Symbology is simply a miniscule assertion of Belarus’s sovereignty concerns with their erstwhile strategical ally, and an enduring preoccupation for Putin. In a bilateral gathering on April 29th 2025, Lukashenko said, “No 1 bans Saint George ribbons under any circumstances. Although, I looked into the history, I advise historians to give you all the information [about] Saint George ribbons.” To which Putin responded, “I do not truly realize what you said relating to the Saint George ribbon, but I can guess what it could be… I completely agree with you – symbols can be different, what is crucial is what is behind these symbols.”
Ukraine itself began a memory politics shift to honouring, alternatively than celebrating, triumph that spring. president Viktor Yanukovych embraced a Russian-style May 9th in 2010-13. But after Russian diplomacy and propaganda began portraying the 2013-14 Revolution of Dignity as a “fascist coup”, Kyiv slow embarked on the Baltic path. In 2015, president Petro Poroshenko created May 8th as the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation. president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s February 23rd 2022 speech, partially in Russian, demonstrates the absurdity of Russian pretenses: “But how can a people who gave more than 8 million lives for the triumph over Nazism support Nazism? How could I be a Nazi? Tell that to my grandfather, who went through the full war in the infantry of the russian Army and died as a colonel in independent Ukraine.” Only in 2023 did Kyiv change triumph Day to May 8th.
Moldova, where president Maia Sandu’s pro-European PAS organization narrowly defeated a pro-Russian candidate in November 2024, shows the most contested narrative. May 9th is inactive triumph Day. But in 2017, erstwhile then-President Igor Dodon attended Putin’s parade as the only guest head of state, Moldovan legislators besides designated May 9th as Europe Day. Since 2022, the parliament has banned Saint George ribbons and “Z” propaganda, although the pro-Russian Socialist organization (PSRM) inactive organizes Immortal Regiments that sometimes flaunt the ribbon ban or wear orange and black clothing to avoid it. The primacy of either Europe Day or triumph Day offers rallying points for competing memory politics.
The erstwhile russian Union’s western states offered the sharpest counterreactions to Russia’s historical policies: even Belarus did not ignore their imperial implications. Let us now cross the Black Sea to the regions with longer histories under Russian imperial control.
Fading memory or geopolitical awakening?
In Armenia and Georgia, May 9th is simply a public vacation with small state engagement (although Armenia commemorates it as a Day of triumph and Peace). For Tbilisi’s pro-Russian government, however, even the shock of Russia’s full-scale invasion did not lead to formal bans on Russian triumph or “Z” symbology. Armenian and Russian soldiers marched together in Yerevan on May 9th 2022. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attended parades with Putin in 2023 and 2025 despite Moscow’s criticism of Armenia’s democracy and permissive stance toward Azerbaijan’s forced exile of cultural Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.
At the same time, both Armenian and Azerbaijani memory politics utilized triumph Day as a building block for their national identities after the russian collapse. akin to Moldova, Armenia “tripled” the vacation by celebrating the May 9th 1991 triumph in the conflict of Shushi in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, and the founding of the Artsakh Defence Army. In a akin breath, Azerbaijan reinterpreted the meaning of “Victory Day”. Since 2020, it falls on November 8th, commemorating Baku’s reconquest of the same city (now renamed Shusha) that completed the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. It relegated May 9th to the background, which has been renamed “Victory Day over Fascism”.
Finishing the tour in Central Asia, we arrive at the default narrative’s most enduring holdouts outside Russia. All 5 leaders – from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – flaunted Russia’s global isolation by joining Putin’s parade in 2023, 2024 and this year. Yet their policies at home reflect delicate balancing acts between celebrating good relations with Moscow and safety concerns from its imperial conquest in Ukraine.
Kyrgyzstan’s May 9th mirrored Russia the most, with presidents leading public events, troops marching with Russian ones based at Kant airbase, and Saint George ribbons. It truly diverged in 2022 erstwhile Bishkek cancelled a conventional military parade, informally discouraged the ribbon, and banned “Z” symbology like Moldova. Tajikistan and Turkmenistan besides mirror Russia (Ashgabat held a parade even amid the pandemic), but Dushanbe banned Immortal Regiments in 2017 due to the “incompatibility” of deceased veterans’ portraits with muslim tradition.
Uzbekistan has tolerated the ribbon only erstwhile worn by Russians since before the full-scale war, promoting a flaglike alternate much like Belarus. Tashkent, commemorating May 9th as the “Day of Remembrance and Honour”, was especially muted amid a cooler period of relations with Russia in 2006-2012 (when it besides hosted a US base). However, links warmed under president Shavkat Mirziyoyev in 2017.
Finally, Kazakhstan presents the most concern in the region. It banned Immortal Regiments and the Saint George ribbon in 2022, and its own military parade this year was the first in six years. Yet another public gatherings have remained restricted. These moves have reflected both Astana and Kazakh society’s acceleration toward nation-building and concern with Russian imperial designs beyond just Ukraine.
The variation in May 9th politics suggests fading memory in the Caucasus. Georgia is caught in an identity crisis over Russian influence and occupation, while Armenia and Azerbaijan have seen their own wars take precedence. But 1 improvement shared from the Black Sea to the Caspian is simply a geopolitical awakening. The countries that did not experience physical demolition in 1941-45 did not have the same impetus as Ukraine and the Baltic states to re-evaluate those years erstwhile the russian Union collapsed. After 2022, they started walking a tightrope between managing dangerous Russian imperial narratives on 1 hand, and celebrating triumph Day as a proxy for dependent economical and safety relations with Russia on the other.
Russia’s triumph narrative: with us or against us?
As we can see, triumph Day has evolved as a government legitimization tool not only for Russia, but for all post-Soviet states, but for the Baltics, at various points since 1965. Its evolution can be broadly grouped into 3 overlapping phases. The first was commemorating veterans, with more muted troop parades (1965-2010, the last 1 with major western participation). This was followed by integration with Russian safety and “colour revolution” narratives featuring Saint George symbology and dense military equipment (2005 to present). After 2013 and the first major disruption in Russia’s relations with the West (the 2008 invasion of Georgia was mostly overlooked), triumph Day began merging with justifying aggression against Ukraine. In Donetsk, Immortal Regiments included portraits of killed separatist fighters alongside Second planet War casualties.
Victory Day became mostly incompatible with European integration narratives present in EU and NATO states, Ukraine, and parts of Moldova, although not Armenia despite its disappointment with Russian safety arrangements. The latest phase began under conditions of full-scale war in 2022. Physically, the 2023 and 2024 parades were even little grandiose than before, but the inclusion of Russian invasion veterans marked a fresh era. War criminals are now on the “main square of the country” this time alternatively than just in warlord-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk. Russian memory politics show that the Second planet War never truly ended. However, this change completes the link from 1945 to the present as a solid line, alternatively than a dashed one.
What does this mean for Russia’s neighbours? The war pretense of “denazification” shows that honouring the “Soviet nation” is non-negotiable for Russia. Russian memory politics leave no area for nuance, for commemorating victims of communist leadership, or remembering victims of russian co-belligerence with the Nazis and of wartime deportations, specified as that of the Balts, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Ingush, Kalmyks, Poles, Volga Germans, and another minorities,. Russian institutions have sought to export celebrations, symbology and their “truth” about the unending large Patriotic War (from 1941 to the present in Ukraine). Countries dependent on Russia proceed to honour May 9th while banning only the explicit “Z” propaganda. all May, this cultural phenomenon serves as a visible indicator of how Caucasian and Central Asian states have actually bolstered their ties with Russia after 2022. In 2025, troops from Azerbaijan and the 5 Central Asian states marched alongside the Russian army on Red Square.
This year, Putin besides presented the geopolitical implications of his memory policy to the world. First, he described the triumph as the “great feat of representatives of different nationalities [in the russian Red Army], who will forever stay in planet past as Russian soldiers” – erasing the discrimination between the 15 successor states the same way he did with Ukraine before the full-scale invasion. Second, he again presented the war against Ukraine as an existential, non-negotiable struggle, with no discrimination between the Kremlin and the nation: “The full country, society, and people support the participants of the peculiar military operation.” Third, in Xi’s presence, he besides acknowledged China’s function in the Second planet War – the only country credited too the russian Union.
The past 3 years have shown that even Russia’s grotesque appropriation of past for aggression has mostly been a soft power success. Why is Russia’s May 9th communicative inactive so potent among neighbours who could possibly be next on the invasion list?
In his book on Russian memory politics, Shaun Walker describes how Putin seized on the vacation to make Russians feel like “winners”, starting this as early as his speech to Second planet War veterans on May 9th 2000. In 2018, the Levada Center’s manager Lev Gudkov credited a feeling of imperial sentiment for Putin’s popularity: “the main area of his achievements, as understood by these 86 per cent [of Russians polled], is global politics, where he, as people say, “forced another countries to admit Russia’s large power status”. This is simply a symbolic compensation for the everyday feeling of constant humiliation of the small man. These are highly crucial things.”
Unfortunately, the same maneuver applies to another regimes. Many post-Soviet presidents enjoyed heading military parades and reminding people of triumph as they developed national ideologies for recently independent states. Eighty years on, the “Great Patriotic War” inactive strikes a real chord.
Moscow’s Red Square ahead of the 9th of May parade in 2025. Photo: Stanislav Palamar / Shutterstock
Losing the communicative war?
The 80th anniversary parade in Moscow was not only another depressing waypoint in an abuse of history. In addition to the usual post-Soviet hybrid regimes, nearly 20 leaders attended the parade, including from Brazil, Burkina Faso (with Africa’s youngest leader personifying a geopolitical pivot from post-colonial France to Russia), China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mongolia, Myanmar, Palestine, the Republic of Congo, Serbia, Slovakia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and the 2 separatist entities of Abkhazia and Republika Srpska. India downgraded its delegation due to hostilities with Pakistan, while Azerbaijan and Laos cancelled at the last minute.
What should western democracies make of these memory politics? First, the erstwhile russian states’ May 9th traditions indicate mixed societal and elite support for Russia in spite of its assault on post-war territorial norms (with another examples being votes and abstentions favouring Russia at the United Nations, participation in sanctions evasion schemes, and divided support for Russia or Ukraine in Central Asian public opinion polls). The endurance of Russian-style May 9th celebrations suggests 2 motivations: elite concerns with breaking ranks with Russia and threatening their own safety unnecessarily (lest they accelerate becoming the “next Ukraine”), and elite bandwagoning on triumph Day as an enduring origin of home government legitimacy. Notably, the second issue is not limited to the region: US president Donald Trump said he wants his own triumph Day by renaming Veteran’s Day, and is simply a known fan of military parades. simply spreading Baltic or Ukrainian historical policies is improbable to work in countries that did not experience the cruelty of Molotov-Ribbentrop firsthand.
Second, western governments must admit and play into the link between past and patriotism – and not tarnish all Soviet-era memory as toxic imperialism. Insisting on societies to abandon celebration is risky due to the fact that many non-Russians stay arrogant of their veteran ancestors and respect their contribution to protecting their homeland from attack, much like Ukraine is doing. In east Europe and Central Asia, pro-European and western narratives must compete with a Russian 1 that offers “post-Soviet” citizens a chance to feel like winners. In doing so, healthy public diplomacy should respect the sacrifices of individual Allied soldiers and civilians – never Stalin or the russian regime. The Biden administration showed an understanding of historical symbolism by signing the Ukraine Democracy Lend-Lease Act of 2022 on May 9th, portraying Ukraine as the rightful successor to the defence of humanity, and the Russian army effectively as the fresh Wehrmacht.
A propaganda billboard in Makiivka in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast connecting the liberation of the region in the Second planet War with today’s events. Photo: Shutterstock
Lastly, academics and information campaigners in the West should imagine the risks of not only Russian triumph in Ukraine, but Russian triumph in writing history. What would popular past in the region look like in that scenario? The multi-year “special military operation” will have been a continuation of the “Great Patriotic War”, just as the “heroic sacrifice” of 1941-45 was a continuation of Russia’s repulse of Napoleon. The nearly 30 BRICS and “Global South” leaders on phase with Putin this year showed their tacit support for this narrative. The long-winding triumph is 1 of the most potent drugs in Russia’s informational arsenal and will require shrewd European informational strategy to counter it.
Alexander Neuman holds an MA in global safety and a BA in global Politics and Russian and Eurasian Studies from George Mason University. He is besides a erstwhile visiting student at the University of Warsaw and an alumnus of fresh east Europe’s Think Tank School.
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