Armored vehicles from a dozen NATO countries, drones, rocket launchers: a crowd flocked to Moscow’s Victory Park on Wednesday to see military ‘trophies’ brought back from the Ukrainian battlefields. On a sunny Moscow May Day, families and couples came to see weapons such as a damaged American-made tank on the opening day of a show organized by the army.
More than two years after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the climate was one of admiration and patriotism, but also of fear in the face of a conflict that drags on with no end in sight. Around 40 military vehicles of all sizes were on display. Among the most photographed were a severely damaged American Abrams tank, a German Leopard 1 and a French AMX-10. The army did not say where exactly they were taken – or at what cost – only that they came from Russian-occupied eastern and southern Ukraine.
The location of the show was chosen symbolically: in the capital’s Victory Park, dedicated to the defeat of the Nazis. Throughout its campaign in Ukraine, Moscow has compared its offensive to the Soviet war effort in World War II, telling Russians it is fighting a similar enemy to the one it did 80 years ago.
One of the soldiers leading the visitors, Andrei Lyubchikov, wanted to underline this comparison by claiming that the show aimed to “demonstrate that, as in the Second World War, our fighters are resisting in the face of the West and its technology”.
The show was held before the celebrations of May 9, when Russia celebrates its victory over the Nazis. The Kremlin has promoted comparisons to World War II while not tolerating any criticism of its offensive. Many of those who flocked to Victory Park to admire the war ‘trophies’ were receptive to this narrative. Dmitry Pervukhin, 75, regretted that Moscow did not act “more decisively” against “Ukrainian Nazis” in 2014 – the year Russia annexed Crimea after a pro-Western revolution in Kiev. But the retired soldier said he was reassured that Russian troops can seize Western tanks. “It means we can fight them,” he said.
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