When President Vladimir Putin leads celebrations honouring the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany on Monday, he will issue a ‘doomsday’ warning to the West, parading Russia’s vast weaponry while its forces continue to battle in Ukraine.
Putin will address in Red Square in front of a procession of troops, tanks, rockets, and intercontinental ballistic missiles, defiant in the face of deep Western isolation since ordering the invasion of Russia’s neighbour.
Supersonic fighters, Tu-160 strategic bombers, and, for the first time since 2010, the Il-80 ‘doomsday’ command jet, which would carry Russia’s top brass in the event of a nuclear war, will fly over St Basil’s Cathedral, according to the Defence Ministry.
In that scenario, the Il-80 would serve as the Russian president’s mobile command centre. It is technologically advanced, but precise information are classified as Russian state secrets.
The 69-year-old Kremlin leader has compared the Ukrainian conflict to the threat that Adolf Hitler’s Nazis posed to the Soviet Union in 1941.
When Putin announced a special military operation in Ukraine on Feb. 24, he stated, ‘The attempt to pacify the aggressor on the eve of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be a miscalculation that cost our people dearly.’
‘We won’t make the same mistake twice; we have no right.’
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