“On the day of the victory over Nazism, we are fighting for another victory,” said Mr. Zelensky as he was shown walking alone through the streets of Kiev, past government buildings protected by barriers and barbed wire.
Together, the speeches showed the two leaders’ commitment to what could be a protracted battle as Ukrainian forces, armed with heavy weapons supplied by the West, fight Russian forces along a 300-mile front in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. . After weeks of intense fighting, Russia has made only sporadic gains.
The Ukrainian army said the Russian army had deployed 19 tactical battalion groups — each with as many as 1,000 troops — to the Russian border town of Belgorod in preparation for an attack to slow a Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kharkov and breach Ukrainian defenses elsewhere in the region.
In Warsaw, protesters chanting “fascists” splashed red liquid on the face of Russian ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreev, as he and other Russian diplomats visited a memorial honoring Red Army soldiers killed in World War II. A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria V. Zakharova, called the protesters “admirers of neo-Nazism.”
Western and Ukrainian officials had speculated that Mr Putin could use the martial arts of the May 9 ceremony to officially declare Russia at war and expand military service, allowing him to increase his depleted troops to as much as endured battle on the battlefield.
But analysts said a massive mobilization of the Russian public, an increase in conscription or a switch to a frugal war economy would undermine the balance he’d found and bring the realities of war into many more households. Mr Putin promised early on that conscripts – young Russian men who are to serve a year of military service – would not be sent into battle. After there were many, Mr Putin ordered an investigation.
“People may be willing to support the war while sitting at home in front of the TV, as they say, but they are not willing to fight at all,” Pavlovsky said. “That’s the central position that Putin understands and tries not to touch.”