You also can be a part of it!
Eight decades ago, the Germany of an already dead Adolf Hitler and a defeated Nazism surrendered unconditionally to the Soviet Union, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. The greatest armed conflict in history, one that claimed the lives of at least 70 million people, had ended in Europe. The concentration camps were liberated, the fascist leader Benito Mussolini had been executed in northern Italy, and the swastika along with the monuments to German high officials fell one after another. Eighty years ago, a tangled peace began to take shape in that old continent that had just witnessed so much death. It would be foolish to diminish such a feat, even if human history is always more complex than fictional tales of heroes and villains, capes and swords.
So let us settle for a basic consensus: eighty years ago Nazism fell, and it’s a good opportunity to remember those who died fighting against that murderous movement. Yes, it’s a basic consensus, that’s true, but it’s also just another fiction of heroes and villains. Those who proclaim themselves heirs to that victorious feat are the heroes; those who do not follow the self-proclaimed heirs, who do not remember the way they’re told to remember, who question the official tale, are the villains. It’s as simple as that.
That was the tone on May 9th in Moscow, at the famous Victory Day military parade, with its soldiers and tanks and missiles and speeches. And one can’t deny that Vladimir Putin, leader of the Kremlin, had plenty of company. The attempts by the United States or the European Union to isolate Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine fell far short of having any total effect. Eight of the nine BRICS members—excluding Russia—sent some form of representation, including the presidents of China, Xi Jinping, and Brazil, Lula da Silva. Also in attendance were political leaders from Cuba, Venezuela, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Serbia, and Myanmar, among others.
Looking at that list, the quick and perhaps hasty conclusion is that Victory Day was little more than a gathering of dictators showing off their weapons to each other. But reality tends to be more complex. Brazil, for instance, with all the fragilities typical of Latin American democracies, is far from being a dictatorship. And Indonesia, Mongolia, South Africa, Slovakia, or Israel, who also sent representatives, are no dictatorships either.
So what does this political support mean, this act of appearing in Red Square, of sitting in the stands next to Putin to watch the parade? Some simply have to be there, compelled by necessity, like Armenia, which hosts more than three thousand Russian soldiers on its territory and whose economy is heavily dependent on Moscow. Others come to repay their debt after Russia helped them when protests (or wars, or international bodies, or economic crises) seemed to put their power at risk. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel, and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko are good examples of this. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad would be too, had his house of cards not collapsed last December.
A third group is made up of those who have spent decades trying to distance themselves, but can’t help being, at least partially, the Kremlin’s backyard, bound by old Soviet-era networks of gas, railroads, electricity, and of course, historical alliances. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan fit this category.
Then there are those who see in Moscow a good trade partner, a potential investor, a destination for exports, and also a provider of technology and knowledge, especially now that post-invasion sanctions have distanced Putin from Western Europe. The BRICS nations fall squarely into this group, starting with Brazil and China, but many African countries are included as well.
Within this last category, there's a subgroup whose connection with Russia isn’t just commercial but also political. Slovakia’s Robert Fico, the only European Union leader to travel to Russia, has laid out many and varied reasons for opposing Brussels. But the most important is the desire to assert independence from the continental bloc. Leaders who want to appear strong cannot afford to be seen simply following the dictates of an international organization. Jarosław Kaczyński, who led Poland’s ruling party from 2015 to 2023, knew this well. So does Viktor Orbán, who has led Hungary for 15 years.
All the leaders who traveled to Moscow (some urgently, some less so) see an opportunity in Russia. Russia has natural and technological resources, infrastructure, and expertise. But more than that, Russia doesn’t ask questions. Did you seize power in a coup? Do you torture your own people? Do you kill those who disobey you? Did you turn your country into a prison no one can escape from? No problem. Russia won’t judge, Russia won’t ask. It only demands that no one judge or ask anything of it in return. Fico and Orbán call this “pragmatic relations.”
Still, if these needs or commercial opportunities were the only things at stake, then a few bilateral meetings or protocol visits would be enough to resolve any negotiation. Attending such a high-profile event as the massive annual military parade in Red Square means something more, though it doesn't take deep analysis to grasp it. The narrative being pushed is so manichean it borders on childish: it's Russia or the Nazis. If you weren’t with the Soviet Union then, and if you’re not with Russia now, then you’re with Hitler. “Truth and justice are on our side,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin in his speech alongside the marching Russian soldiers. So what’s on the other side, then? The enemy of yesterday and today, the eternal enemy.
Analogical reasoning refers to the use of parallels and comparisons with historical or current events to justify certain decisions in the present. If, as Putin claimed in 2022, Ukraine is ruled by neo-Nazism, the analogy becomes both clear and useful: Russia must defeat it just as it defeated Nazism in 1945, and it must achieve a victory just as important and symbolic as the one now commemorated in Red Square, where the Russian leader speaks surrounded by allies. In this narrative, the two wars are connected, one continuing the other. The need to repel the supposedly barbaric enemies of the Russian state and people becomes nothing less than a historical duty, an imperative mission for every Russian. Any alternative is unacceptable. The mythologizing of history and the imposition of this emotional narrative through such a highly visible and aesthetic practice helps construct a singular interpretation of both past and present. This manichean narrative is especially useful in times of war, but the Kremlin had already been promoting a similar (though perhaps weaker) version before 2022, as if it could only function in a permanent state of war. However much the general structure of Victory Day parades may change, the message remains the same: Russia has always been and will always be under threat, and the only way to face it and survive is unity under a strong leader. Those who deny this are no different from the enemy.
So yes, there are trade needs. There are political interests, economic opportunities, pragmatism, support, a lack of uncomfortable questions. All of that exists. And it’s also true that all of it may carry more weight than the most basic human morality to not endorse others’ suffering or look away. What does a bombed Ukraine matter, or Russian political prisoners? What do the tortured, the dead, the disappeared, the repressed, the violated matter? What does the present matter, if today, in this Red Square, all we have to do is look to the past and see ourselves as heroes in this tale of heroes and villains? What does it matter, if today, in this extraordinary parade, pragmatism prevails? Sitting in the stands and watching the parade means becoming part of that simple, yet effective, narrative that Putin lays out: only evil stands against me, because truth and justice are on my side. Everyone else is a Nazi. And I am not.
