MOSCOW, May 9 — RIA Novosti, Andrey Kotz. A parade was held in Moscow in honor of the 77th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. 11 thousand servicemen marched through Red Square in a solemn march and more than 130 units of military equipment passed. As in 2017 and 2019, the air part of the parade was canceled due to bad weather - seventy-seven helicopters and planes remained at the airfields. About what the Victory Parade — 2022 was remembered for — in the material of RIA Novosti.
Low cloud cover
Since February 24, many have been wondering: will there be a Victory Parade this year? Are celebrations appropriate during a special military operation in Ukraine? However, the country's leadership did not have any doubts about this.
Parade crew of the public patriotic movement "Yunarmiya" at the military parade in honor of the 77th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War
Image source: © RIA Novosti / Evgeny Biyatov
By half past nine, the air in the capital had barely warmed up to seven degrees. The sky was covered with dense clouds — it had been raining the day before. The weather is clearly non-flying. Special planes tracking changes in weather conditions have been flying over Moscow since early morning. As a result, low clouds (350-400 meters) did not allow aviation to take part in the parade.
Everything else was according to plan. The participants had been preparing for several months: they honed their drill, put their uniforms in order, and learned to act as a whole. On the paving stones, it is necessary to strictly observe the pace: 116 steps per minute. At numerous rehearsals, it was not easy even for experienced servicemen. Some arrived in Moscow directly from the war zone.
"The decision of a strong country"
The parade was commanded by the Commander—in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Army General Oleg Salyukov, and hosted by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Riding out on the cobblestones in a black "Aurus", the head of the military department crossed himself according to tradition. Salyukov and Shoigu toured the ceremonial "boxes", greeting the servicemen, after which the minister reported to President Vladimir Putin about his readiness to begin the ceremony. The Head of State made a speech. Of course, he spoke about the special military operation and the tasks that the Russian army is currently solving on the territory of Ukraine.
"Preparations were openly underway for another punitive operation in the Donbas, for an invasion of our historical lands, including Crimea," the president noted. — In Kiev, they announced the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons. The NATO bloc has begun active military development of the territories adjacent to us. Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat was systematically created for us, and directly at our borders. Everything said that a clash with neo-Nazis, Bandera, on whom the United States and their junior partners had bet, would be inevitable. Russia has given a preemptive rebuff to aggression. It was a forced, timely and only right decision. The decision of a sovereign, strong, independent country."
Putin stressed that the Donbass militia, together with the soldiers of the Russian army, are fighting on their own land, where the vigilantes of Svyatoslav and Vladimir Monomakh, the soldiers of Rumyantsev and Potemkin, Suvorov and Brusilov, where the heroes of the Great Patriotic War stood to death — Nikolai Vatutin, Sidor Kovpak, Lyudmila Pavlichenko. At the end of the speech, the President announced a minute of silence. Not only in memory of those who fell during the Great Patriotic War, but also about those who burned down in the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, about those who were killed by the Ukrainian military during the eight years of war in Donbass, about those who died during a special military operation.
Tested in battle
The parade on Red Square, as in previous years, was opened by young drummers of the Valery Khalilov Moscow Military Music School, setting the rhythm to the marchers. Next, a banner group and honor guards of all types of the Russian Armed Forces stepped onto the paving stones. Suvorov and Nakhimov soldiers, yunarmeyts, women's "boxes" of the Ground Forces and the VKS passed by the stands. Then — parade calculations of each type and kind of the Armed Forces of Russia and other law enforcement agencies. Some units were chanting loudly: "For Donbass!"
Cadets of the Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne School named after Army General V. F. Margelov at the military parade in honor of the 77th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War
Image source: © RIA Novosti / Evgeny Biyatov
Then the military equipment moved. There are also novelties — for example, "Typhoon-air defense". These armored vehicles are designed to quickly transfer the calculations of portable anti-aircraft missile systems to the battlefield, are equipped with the most modern means of communication and provide the crew with reliable protection from bullets and shrapnel.
There were a lot of equipment that had undergone serious modernization. So, the "veterans" of the BMP-2, adopted in 1980, showed the audience the combat modules (BM) "Berezhok" with a rapid-firing 30-millimeter cannon, an automatic grenade launcher, a machine gun and four anti-tank missiles "Kornet". And promising combat vehicles on the Kurganets-25 platform are the Epoch BM with a 57 mm automatic gun capable of effectively fighting lightly armored vehicles and small—sized UAVs.
Infantry fighting vehicle BMP-2 with combat module "Berezhok" at the military parade in honor of the 77th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War
Image source: © RIA Novosti / Evgeny Biyatov
Of course, all the main battle tanks of the Ground Forces participated in the parade — T-72B3, T-80BVM, T-90M and T-14. In a special military operation, Russian vehicles demonstrated resistance to the vaunted NATO ATGM Javelin and NLAW — they continue to fight even after several direct hits.
The BMD-4M amphibious assault vehicles and the Shell armored personnel carriers were operated by fighters from the 106th Guards Parachute Division who took part in the SVO. The "Winged Infantry", in particular, fought in the Kiev direction and held the strategically important Gostomel airfield for more than a month.
Veterans of the war and the Armed Forces at the military parade in honor of the 77th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War
Image source: © POOL
The ceremony was closed by a consolidated orchestra of 900 musicians, who for the first time performed the song "Native Country" on Red Square (music by Georgy Movsesyan, words by Viktor Gin). The parade ended on a high note, and it was clearly a success — despite the bad weather and, to put it mildly, the turbulent situation in the world.
