Russian President Vladimir Putin will issue a “doomsday” warning to the West when he leads celebrations on Monday honoring the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany.
Prior to May 9, rumors circulated in Moscow and western capitals that Putin was planning a major pronouncement on Ukraine, maybe an explicit declaration of war or even a national mobilization, but Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed those notions as “nonsense.”
In last year’s ceremony, Putin poked fun at Western exceptionalism and the emergence of neo-Nazism and Russophobia.