伦敦-5月9日，俄罗斯将庆祝胜利日，其纪念周年的大型全国性节日二战期间，莫斯科街头举行了阅兵式，庆祝纳粹战败。
报告显示，就火力而言，它会是一个不那么奢侈的展示参加的坦克和其他军事装备较少，但今年的活动具有额外的意义。
剑桥大学三一学院的俄罗斯和苏联文化教授Catriona Kelly告诉ABC新闻:“V日的最初意义对苏联和其他盟国来说是一样的。”“另一方面，在20世纪90年代，纪念活动变得不那么重要了，并在普京时代以前所未有的规模再次复兴。”
期待什么
在普京的统治下，胜利日已经成为俄罗斯的中央全国性节日，对苏联胜利的崇敬是他政权的基石。普京恢复了纪念这个节日的阅兵式，自2014年以来，阅兵式的规模几乎每年都在增长，成为俄罗斯军事实力的展示。
凯利说，战争纪念活动是“一种侵略性爱国主义的基础，这种爱国主义基于对国家生存的外部威胁的认识”。
据估计，苏联有2700万人死于第二次世界大战，这个巨大的死亡人数让其他国家相形见绌，对许多俄罗斯人来说，战争的记忆仍然具有深刻的个人意义。
俄罗斯事务安全专家马克·加莱奥蒂(Mark Galeotti)表示，普京公开宣称的“去纳粹化”目标，与克里姆林宫为其政治目的制造这段历史的努力直接相关。
“很大程度上，整个目的就是试图将这场战争包裹在他们所谓的伟大卫国战争的外衣下，”加莱奥蒂说。“记住，普京预计这将是两周内迅速而轻松的胜利。我认为这是他对历史名望的一种要求。你知道，这将是他的时刻，他希望这能与战胜纳粹相提并论。”
乌克兰和西方国家以及独立专家认为，克里姆林宫希望将胜利日定为在与乌克兰的战争中取得军事胜利或至少宣布征服顿巴斯地区的最后期限。
但战争迄今对俄罗斯造成的灾难性后果——俄罗斯已从基辅撤军，目前对东乌克兰的攻势也已停止——迫使克里姆林宫以不同的方式应对这一天。
英国武装部队大臣近日表示，俄将“很可能”以胜利日为契机，正式对乌宣战，但克里姆林宫对此予以否认。
美国国务院发言人内德·普莱斯(Ned Price)最近对记者表示:“如果莫斯科利用胜利日之际宣战，这将是一个巨大的讽刺，这本身将允许他们以现在无法做到的方式增兵。”。“在某种程度上，这将等于向世界揭示，他们的战争努力正在失败，他们正在他们的军事行动和军事目标中挣扎。”
控制叙事
在过去十周的战争中，许多分析人士将5月9日视为一个关键的标志，普京必须在这一天向俄罗斯人民展示这场战争的“奖品”，这场战争在该国仅被称为“特别军事行动”。
这个“奖品”可能是马里乌波尔，这个被围困的港口城市是自战争开始以来一些最严重的战斗和轰炸的地点，尽管毫无疑问战争没有按计划进行。
凯利说，“在现阶段可以宣布的任何俄罗斯胜利充其量只会看起来像一个近似值，尽管最近几天对马里乌波尔的Azovstal的攻击表明，完全占领该城市将被视为5月9日的奖励”。
乌克兰军方声称，该市的街道，那里恐怕成千上万的人已经被杀害在俄罗斯的攻击下，正在清理废墟，为胜利日的阅兵式做准备。
俄罗斯情报评估最初表示，首都基辅将在入侵后几天内沦陷，但乌克兰的顽强抵抗和西方的统一战线现在已经改变了克里姆林宫将纪念的胜利日的类型。即便如此，普京仍然严格控制着围绕这场战争的叙事，到目前为止，当成千上万的俄罗斯人被杀的消息出现时，可能在国内产生的影响还没有被感受到。
“我敢肯定，普京会喜欢在胜利日宣布胜利，”加莱奥蒂告诉美国广播公司新闻。“但是...当所有的国家媒体都在你的控制之下，你已经挤出了独立媒体的每一个元素，在某种程度上，你可以写叙事，然后叙事将是马里乌波尔赢了，这绝不是要占领整个乌克兰。”
从现有的信息来看，公众舆论似乎勉强支持在俄罗斯的战争，尽管加莱奥蒂说，俄罗斯媒体上投射的“特别行动”的图像“与所发生的现实毫无关系”。
无论普京在胜利日的演讲中说了什么，都没有暗示俄罗斯会很快就会结束战争，即使他们的战争目标现在已经改变，以创建一个通往克里米亚的陆上走廊。
“普京必须‘赢’，或者换句话说，他没有倒档，”凯利说。“这意味着他应对误判的唯一手段就是反击。所有证据表明，他预计乌克兰武装力量会像2014年克里米亚那样迅速崩溃。他不认为西方国家会像现在这样反对。从这两个角度来看，乌克兰都是一个冲击，是他政治生涯中最大的挑战。”
Russia's Victory Day to mark key milestone in war with Ukraine
LONDON -- On May 9, Russia will celebrate Victory Day, itshuge national holiday commemorating the anniversaryof the defeat of the Nazis during World War II with a military parade through the streets of Moscow.
Reports suggest that, in terms of firepower, itwill be a less extravagant display, with fewer tanks and other military hardware set to take part, but this year's event carries extra significance.
"The original significance of V Day was the same for the USSR as for the other allies," Catriona Kelly, a professor of Russian and Soviet Culture at Trinity College, Cambridge, told ABC News. "In the 1990s, on the other hand, commemoration became much less important, and was revived again, on an unprecedented scale, in the Putin era."
What to expect
Under Putin, Victory Day has become Russia's central national holiday and veneration of the Soviet victory a cornerstone of his regime. Putin revived the military parades marking the holiday, and they have grown in size almost each year since 2014, becoming a showcase of Russian military might.
War commemoration serves as a "basis of an aggressive patriotism based on the perception of an external threat to the country's survival," Kelly said.
An estimated 27 million people from the Soviet Union died during the Second World War, an enormous death toll that dwarfs that of other countries, and memory of the war still holds deep personal significance for many Russians.
Putin's avowed goal to "de-Nazify" Ukraine is directly linked to the Kremlin's efforts to cultivate that history for its political ends, according to Mark Galeotti, a security expert on Russian affairs.
"Largely the whole point was exactly to try and wrap this war in the mantle of what they call the Great Patriotic War," Galeotti said. "Remember, Putin expected this to be a quick and easy victory in two weeks. I think this was going to be his kind of claim to historical fame. You know, this is going to be his moment, he wanted it to be comparable to victory over Nazis."
Ukraine and Western countries, as well as independent experts, believe the Kremlin had hoped to set Victory Day as a deadline to achieve a military victory in the war with Ukraine or at least to declare the conquest of the Donbas region.
But the disastrous course of the war so far for Russia -- that has seen it retreat from Kyiv and its current offensive on east Ukraine now stalled -- has forced the Kremlin to approach the day differently.
The British armed forces minister recently said that Russia will "probably" use Victory Day as an opportunity to formally declare war on Ukraine, but the Kremlin has denied this.
"That would be a great irony if Moscow used the occasion of Victory Day to declare war, which in itself would allow them to surge conscripts in a way they're not able to do now," State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters recently. "In a way, that would be tantamount to revealing to the world that their war effort is failing, that they are floundering in their military campaign and military objectives."
Controlling the narrative
During the past ten weeks of war, many analysts have pointed to May 9 as a key marker, a date where Putin will have to show the Russian people a "prize" from the war, which is only referred to in the country as a "special military operation."
That "prize" could be Mariupol, the beleaguered port city that has been the site of some of the worst fighting and bombing since the war began, though there is no hiding that the war has not gone to plan.
"Any Russian victory that can be proclaimed at this stage will look like an approximation at best, though the onslaught on Azovstal in Mariupol in recent days suggests that complete capture of the city will be represented as a prize" on May 9, Kelly said.
Ukraine's military has claimed that the streets of the city, wheretens of thousands are feared to have been killedunder the Russian assault, are being cleared of debris in preparation for a parade there on Victory Day.
Russian intelligence assessments initially said that the capital of Kyiv would fall within a matter of days of the invasion, but stiff Ukrainian resistance and a united front in the West have now changed the kind of Victory Day the Kremlin will be commemorating. Even so, Putin retains a tight control of the narrative around the war, and so far, the impact that could reverberate at home when news of the thousands of Russians killed emerges, has not been felt.
"I'm sure Putin would have loved to have had the victory to announce for Victory Day," Galeotti told ABC News. "But ... when you have all the state media under your control and you've squeezed out every element of independent media, in some ways you get to write the narrative, and then the narrative will be that Mariupol is won, that this was never about taking all of Ukraine."
From the information available, public opinion seems to be narrowly in favor of the war in Russia, though Galeotti said the image projected of the "special operation" in the Russian media has "nothing at all to do with the reality of what's happened."
Whatever Putin says in his speech on Victory Day, there has been no suggestion that Russia will bewinding down its war anytime soon, even if their war aims have now changed to create a land corridor to Crimea.
"Putin has to 'win', or to put it differently, he has no reverse gear," Kelly said. "That means his only means of reacting to a miscalculation is to fight back. All the evidence suggests that he expected a rapid collapse of the Ukrainian armed forces of the kind that happened in Crimea in 2014. And he didn't expect pushback from Western countries on the level there has been. Ukraine has been a shock from both points of view and is the biggest challenge of his political career."
