Nicolas Tonev, edited by Thibault Nadal
modified to
6:05 p.m., May 09, 2022
Anticipated as extraordinary by most observers, this parade on May 9 in Russia, in the midst of a special operation in Ukraine according to the official terminology of the Kremlin, will ultimately be, with the exception of planes and little-seen figures, rather ordinary in terms volume of material presented.
The Russians and especially the world will see the very impressive intercontinental missile launchers parade like every year. On the occasion of May 9, the date of the capitulation of Nazi Germany in 1945, Russia will also exhibit its most recent tanks in small numbers, because only a few dozen would have been built, according to an American specialist in Forbes magazine.
Russia wants to impress the world with its aviation
The tanks in service in large numbers will be few in the parade because they are currently mobilized on the ground in Ukraine. Finally, it is in the air that the Kremlin will seek to impress with a Z drawn in the sky by the most recent Migs of the Russian aviation. This Z is that of Zachita in Russian.
There will also be the presence of this command plane in the event of nuclear war, the Illiouchine 80. The Kremlin has done a lot to describe it as the plane of the apocalypse, but it is a bit of an exceptional exit for to scare a device built in four copies in the 1980s on the basis of a civil aircraft and one of which has been out of use since the theft of its equipment.
This Illiouchine 80 is only a flying command post capable of withstanding the electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear attack, as the United States also has. The most important thing in this parade will therefore not be to see, but to hear and listen very carefully, that is to say the words of Vladimir Putin.