Putin’s Victory Day parade drew signs of weakness, while Fico’s Russia trip sparked EU backlash and intensified political pressure in Slovakia.
What Russians call ‘Victory Day’ (9 May) was a sad day for Russian president Vladimir Putin and Slovak prime minister Robert Fico.. Putin had no tanks or missiles on his WWII-memorial parade as usual, for fear Ukrainian drones would set them ablaze in Red Square, but he did have goose-stepping North Korean soldiers with silver AK47s, which only showed that his army needed outside help.. And just six leaders from UN-recognised states joined him –
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, Slovakia, and Uzbekistan – which also showed his isolation.. Looking tired, his combover thinner than last year, but with more bodyguards than ever, Putin blamed Nato for the Ukraine war in a brief speech and left quickly.. He later told press he wanted a Gazprom employee (and former German chancellor), 82-year-old Gerhard Schröder, to be the EU’s representative in new Ukraine peace talks.. But even if there were to be peace
negotiations, the way some EU countries treated Fico indicated there was little chance Europe would give Putin’s man, Schröder, that honour.. Fico had to fly via the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, and Finland to Russia and back because the Baltic states and Poland closed their airspace in protest at his Kremlin simping.. He jokingly called himself the “black sheep of the European Union” while in Moscow, said “I reject a new Iron Curtain”, and was
filmed toasting Putin with a glass of vodka.. But Slovak opposition ‘SaS’ party leader Branislav Gröhling called his trip “a slap in the face” for the EU, while adding that Fico went to learn “how to undermine democratic elections in Slovakia”, due in September 2027.. For his part, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky trolled Putin by publishing an official “permission” for his Victory Day event.. And Western schadenfreude over Moscow’s mini-parade was compounded by joy in
Budapest the same day, where the pro-EU and Ukraine-friendly government of prime minister Péter Magyar was sworn in.. Magyar DJ-ed, while Hungary’s likely new health minister, Zsolt Hegedus, danced on stage.. Too soon for optimism It is too optimistic to think Putin’s regime, or far-right EU populism, are on the brink of collapse.. But Putin did look in decline on Saturday, while Fico might soon go the way of former Hungarian prime minister and Putin’s
only other EU ally, Viktor Orbán.. Some 360,000 Slovaks (out of 5.5m) filed a petition in April calling for early elections.. And although the president rejected this, a referendum on 4 July will test Fico’s popularity, when Slovaks vote on “the abolition of the so-called lifetime annuity; for example, for [prime minister] Robert Fico”, and on the reinstatement of anti-corruption bodies.. It is also too optimistic to think Putin really wants peace, despite his Schröder
proposal.. Russia’s air force and army violated Sunday’s US-brokered temporary ceasefire 174 times, Ukraine said.. And Putin threatened Armenia with a Ukraine-type scenario if Armenian prime minister Nikolai Pashinyan also abandoned him and his ‘Eurasian Economic Union’ in favour of the EU.. “We are currently experiencing [in Armenia] everything that’s happening in the Ukrainian sphere.. And where did it all begin?. With Ukraine’s accession, or attempted accession, to the EU.. That was the first stage,”
Putin said in his post-parade press briefing.
Victory Day parade, Vladimir Putin, Robert Fico, EU airspace closure, Gerhard Schroder, Zelensky permission