President Vladimir Putin has exhorted Russians to battle in a defiant Victory Day speech but was silent about plans for any escalation in Ukraine, despite Western warnings he might use his Red Square address to order a national mobilisation.
In Ukraine, there was no let-up in fighting, with missile strikes destroying buildings in the southern port of Odesa and a renewed push by Russian forces to defeat the last Ukrainian troops holding out in a steelworks in ruined Mariupol.
Monday’s annual parade in Moscow – with the usual ballistic missiles and tanks rumbling across the cobblestones – was easily the most closely watched since the 1945 defeat of the Nazis that it celebrates.
Western capitals had openly speculated that Putin was driving his forces to achieve enough progress by the symbolic date to declare victory, but with few gains so far, might instead announce a national call-up for war.
The Russian president did neither but repeated his assertions that his forces were again fighting Nazis.
“You are fighting for the motherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of World War II. So that there is no place in the world for executioners, castigators and Nazis,” Putin said from the tribune outside the Kremlin walls.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his own speech, promised Ukrainians would triumph.
“On the Day of Victory over Nazism, we are fighting for a new victory. The road to it is difficult, but we have no doubt that we will win,” Zelenskiy said.
In Washington, where sources say Democratic lawmakers have agreed on a $US40 billion ($A57 billion) aid proposal for Ukraine, including a massive new weapons package, US President Joe Biden said he was worried Putin did not have a way out of the war.
The White House had earlier described Putin’s remarks as “revisionist history that took the form of disinformation”.
Russia’s war has killed thousands of civilians, sent millions of Ukrainians fleeing and reduced cities to rubble. Moscow has little to show for it beyond a strip of territory in the south and marginal gains in the east.
The Soviet victory in World War II has acquired almost religious status in Russia under Putin, who has invoked the memory of the “Great Patriotic War” throughout what he calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Western countries consider that a false analogy to justify unprovoked aggression.
“There can be no victory day, only dishonour and surely defeat in Ukraine,” British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said.
In Poland, the Russian ambassador was surrounded by protesters at a memorial ceremony and doused in red paint. Ambassador Sergei Andreyev, his face dripping and his shirt stained, said he was “proud of my country and my president”.
After an assault on Kyiv was beaten back in March by strong Ukrainian resistance, Russia last month poured in more troops for a huge offensive in the east.
Russian gains have been slow at best as the conflict grinds through its 11th week, and Western arms are flooding into Ukraine for an expected counter-attack.
Western military experts – many of whom initially predicted a quick Russian victory – now say Moscow could be running out of troops. A full declaration of war would let Putin activate reservists and send conscripts.
In Ukraine’s port city of Odesa, missiles struck tourist sites, destroying five buildings and injuring two people, its city council said.
Odesa officials separately said explosions had set fire to a shopping centre in the city.
Four people were killed and several homes were destroyed in Russian attacks in the town of Bogodukhov, northwest of Kharkiv, local media reported.
Ukraine’s defence ministry said Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery were conducting “storming operations” at Mariupol’s Azovstal plant, where hundreds of Ukrainian defenders have held out through months of siege. Civilians sheltering there were evacuated in recent days.
The Russians were trying to blow up a bridge used for evacuations, to trap the last defenders inside, Mariupol mayoral aide Petro Andryuschenko said.
