What is Russia's Victory Day? The day celebrates the Soviet U | USSR 2.0

What is Russia's Victory Day?

The day celebrates the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

It includes military parades in Moscow and more than two dozen Russian cities. It will involve nearly 65,000 people, 2,400 types of weapons and military equipment and more than 460 planes, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War Two, more than any other country, and Putin has railed in recent years at what Moscow sees as attempts in the West to revise the history of the war to belittle the Soviet victory. Putin has been revising Russian history for decades. Since its 2008 invasion of Georgia, he said Putin has voiced a romantic version of Russian nationalism. One where the country is -- and should be -- accorded great power status in Europe.

As he re-writes Russian history, Putin is positioning himself alongside Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Stalin as the fourth leader of a "great and powerful" Russia. To achieve this vision, he wants to capture territory that once formed the historic area of Novorossiya, such as south and eastern Ukraine.

With Russia clearly underperforming in Ukraine, Putin will likely try and use the parade to build public confidence in the military. He expects the parade to be more militaristic and the speeches more assertive than ever before.

After claiming Russia is "denazifying" Ukraine, Putin now says Russia is fighting a European Nazism backed by American imperialists. At the parade, we anticipate a speech that Russia is engaged in a Patriotic War 2.0, where the country is fighting for its very survival.

This is to prepare them for possible troop call ups and bigger economic sacrifices as the war drags on.

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