Russia's Victory Day Reveals Empire in Crisis

Analysis of: Russia will always be victorious, says Putin at scaled-back Victory Day parade
The Guardian | May 9, 2026

TL;DR

Russia's scaled-back Victory Day parade reveals an empire straining under contradictions of its own making—military exhaustion, economic crisis, and waning legitimacy. The spectacle of North Korean soldiers marching on Red Square marks a dramatic realignment of inter-imperialist alliances.

Analytical Focus:Contradictions Historical Context Interconnections

The 2026 Victory Day parade in Moscow presents a crystalline image of imperial overreach meeting material limits. What was once a triumphalist display of military power—complete with intercontinental missiles and armored columns—has been reduced to a 45-minute ceremony under internet blackout, protected by a ceasefire requested from the very adversary Russia initially expected to defeat in weeks. The transformation from spectacle of strength to ritual of vulnerability captures the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Russia's war: the attempt to project great-power status while the material base for such projection erodes. The presence of North Korean troops marching on Red Square represents perhaps the most striking symbol of shifting inter-imperialist alignments. A nuclear-armed state that once led a superpower bloc now relies on soldiers from one of the world's most isolated economies to sustain its military operations. This is not alliance between equals but a desperate arrangement born of mutual isolation from Western capital flows. Meanwhile, the attendance limited to Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan—former Soviet republics with little choice but to maintain ties—underscores Russia's diplomatic isolation even among nominal allies. The economic subtext proves equally revealing. After years of war-fueled growth driven by military Keynesianism, Russia now faces inflation, budget deficits, and slowing growth—the classic contradictions of war economies that cannot sustain indefinite mobilization. The internet blackouts, ostensibly for security, have generated public anger, demonstrating how the security state's requirements increasingly conflict with the population's daily life. Putin's decision to sit with Ukraine war veterans rather than WWII survivors marks an implicit acknowledgment that the ideological legitimacy derived from the Great Patriotic War is being transferred to a conflict that has produced only stalemate and sacrifice.

Class Dynamics

Actors: Russian state apparatus and military command, Russian working class and conscripted soldiers, Ukrainian working class bearing war's human cost, Western capitalist states (NATO bloc), North Korean state providing troops, Russian oligarchy tied to war economy, Peripheral post-Soviet states (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan)

Beneficiaries: Military-industrial complex benefiting from sustained war spending, Russian and Western arms manufacturers, Political elites using nationalist mobilization to maintain power, North Korean regime gaining diplomatic leverage and resources

Harmed Parties: Russian and Ukrainian workers dying in combat, Russian civilians facing inflation and economic strain, Ukrainian civilians enduring occupation and bombardment, Russian public subjected to internet blackouts and surveillance, North Korean soldiers sent as expendable forces

The war concentrates power in the Russian executive while extracting human and material resources from the working classes of multiple nations. Putin's regime maintains control through nationalist ideology and security apparatus, but mass mobilization has created new tensions as the costs of war reach deeper into Russian society. The state's admission that security measures protect Putin personally reveals the narrowing base of the regime's legitimacy.

Material Conditions

Economic Factors: Inflation eroding living standards for ordinary Russians, Record budget deficits from sustained military spending, Military Keynesianism reaching productive limits, Western sanctions restricting capital and technology flows, War-driven growth model showing structural exhaustion

The war economy has subordinated civilian production to military needs, creating short-term growth through state spending while undermining long-term productive capacity. The reliance on North Korean troops signals an inability to sustain the labor power required for the conflict domestically—a fundamental crisis in the reproduction of military capacity.

Resources at Stake: Ukrainian territory and agricultural/industrial resources, Control over energy transit routes, Access to Western markets and technology, Human lives as expendable military labor, Russian state legitimacy and regime survival

Historical Context

Precedents: Soviet intervention in Afghanistan leading to imperial decline, WWI imperial overreach and subsequent revolutionary upheaval, Nazi Germany's resource-driven expansion and ultimate defeat, Late Soviet economic stagnation under military burden

Russia's invasion follows a pattern of declining powers attempting to reassert regional hegemony through military means when economic competition proves insufficient. The war now exceeding the duration of the Soviet campaign against Nazi Germany represents a historical threshold—the ideological frame of 'anti-fascism' becomes increasingly hollow as the conflict drags on without resolution. This echoes the late Soviet period when military commitments outpaced economic capacity, though the contemporary situation involves integration into global capitalism rather than separation from it.

Contradictions

Primary: The fundamental contradiction between Russia's aspiration to great-power status and its insufficient material base to sustain imperial projection—military Keynesianism generates short-term growth while hollowing out long-term productive capacity and popular consent.

Secondary: The contradiction between security requirements (blackouts, restrictions) and maintaining popular support, The gap between triumphalist rhetoric ('victory will always be ours') and grinding stalemate, The tension between nationalist ideology and dependence on foreign (North Korean) military labor, The conflict between demanding Ukrainian withdrawal while being unable to achieve it militarily

These contradictions appear to be intensifying rather than resolving. The war economy cannot sustain indefinite mobilization, but the regime has staked its legitimacy on victory. Possible trajectories include: negotiated settlement that allows face-saving but represents strategic defeat; continued grinding conflict until economic exhaustion forces change; or internal political crisis as the costs of war become unbearable. The ceasefire—requested by Russia, granted by Ukraine—suggests the balance of pressure is shifting.

Global Interconnections

The Ukraine conflict represents a critical node in the reconfiguration of global imperialist alignments following the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent decline of US hegemony. Russia's invasion was premised on Western division and decline—a bet that has proven partially correct (the US remains distracted by internal contradictions) but insufficient to secure victory. The North Korean alliance signals the emergence of a bloc of states excluded from Western-dominated capital circuits, seeking survival through mutual support rather than integration into the liberal international order. This inter-imperialist realignment carries profound implications for the global working class. The conflict demonstrates how capitalist crises are displaced onto peripheral populations through war, while workers in all countries bear the costs through inflation, conscription, and redirection of resources from social needs to military production. The Trump administration's role as ceasefire broker—after years of arms supplies to Ukraine—reveals how the US maintains influence by managing conflicts it helped fuel, extracting geopolitical advantage from both prolongation and resolution.

Conclusion

The 2026 Victory Day parade, stripped of its usual pageantry and conducted under siege conditions, offers a warning about the trajectory of declining powers in the contemporary capitalist world-system. Neither Russian nor Western working classes benefit from this conflict's continuation; both face inflation, militarism, and the erosion of social provisions as resources flow to destruction. The path forward requires solidarity across borders against the logic of inter-imperialist competition—recognizing that workers in Moscow and Kyiv share more interests with each other than with the elites who send them to die. The contradictions on display in Red Square—between rhetoric and reality, aspiration and capacity—will not resolve themselves, but their development creates openings for forces seeking alternatives to the cycle of imperial competition and war.

Suggested Reading

• Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of inter-imperialist rivalry and the tendency of capitalist powers toward military conflict over markets and resources directly illuminates the structural dynamics driving the Ukraine war.
• The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin (1917) Understanding the Russian state's role in mobilizing society for war while protecting elite interests requires Lenin's analysis of the capitalist state as an instrument of class rule.
• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's documentation of how crises are exploited to restructure economies helps explain both the war economy's logic and the likely post-conflict reconstruction agendas being prepared by various powers.