The preparation of Putin's parade for the so-called Victory Day on May 9 turned the lives of Muscovites into an obstacle course: mobile connections, electronic payment systems and navigation devices were disrupted for days due to regular Internet shutdowns, planes were not flying, and there were kilometers of traffic jams on the city streets.
Do not board Aeroflot planes
The Ukrainian leadership quite accurately felt the weak spot of the Kremlin leadership: its desire for "its" Victory Parade in World War II. The massive drone war organized by the Ukrainian armed forces practically paralyzed air traffic in Moscow. Thousands of passengers were stranded at the capital's airports. Thousands of others were unable to reach their homes, not only in the Moscow region but also in a number of other cities.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was forced to fly to visit Putin via Baku - due to the refusal of the Baltic countries to let his plane through their airspace. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who is always very careful about Kremlin invitations, nevertheless refused to fly to Russia at the last minute. They will undoubtedly come up with and announce some official explanation for the public, but who would believe that this absence is not related to security? If I were the head of the Azerbaijani president's security, that is exactly what I would advise him to do - not to fly to Moscow.
In other words, it can be said that Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals achieved what they wanted and overshadowed the Russian dictator's holiday.
Illusion of comfort
For most people, the illusion of a comfortable modern "cloud" city, where all life is housed in a smartphone, was quickly dispelled. It turned out that Muscovites had to stand for hours in various tunnels, call from archaic street phones, and also carry cash with them. The reason that Moscow residents, as well as guests of the capital, were forced to return in the early 1990s was not so much due to the actions of Ukrainian drone operators. The entire city districts blocked by the Federal Security Service, the Internet and mobile phone outages were not directly related to the Ukrainian air strikes. All this was the result of Putin's maniacal desire to hold the planned celebration of the great victory of the USSR in World War II at any cost, the history of which he distorted beyond recognition in his desire for self-aggrandizement.
And since Putin fears above all for his life and image, there are no measures he is not ready to take to ensure his security and maintain his fading prestige. And the cowardice and hypocrisy in the official explanations for the chaos caused in the capital are, as always, quite typical. Putin's spokesman Peskov said that mobile Internet in Moscow would be limited until May 10 because of some "dangerous districts". Here he did not mention Ukraine at all, which is otherwise something like the "alter ego" of the Russian dictator. He was clearly afraid to recall that for the twelfth year in a row, it was Russia, led by his boss, that was waging an aggressive war against its neighboring country.
The most famous question
The slippery formulations of the "collective Peskov" until recently acted as an effective sleeping pill for a significant part of Russians. However, I am sure that the people who dig through their pockets for money to pay for coffee in some expensive Moscow establishment, and the others who breathe in carbon dioxide fumes while driving Chinese electric cars in Moscow traffic jams, as well as those who cannot fly with their families from Domodedovo to the seaside in Antalya, deep down know the true answer to the most famous Russian question of recent years. And it says: What happened?
On the eve of the parade, Putin literally slammed them into the harsh reality of the police regime he created. In it, the citizens of the country are of no value. Only one person and his plans are important.
Putin's plan is to bring "his" war to a victorious end. And if he runs out of mercenaries for 5 million rubles each, he will announce exactly the mobilization that Russians have always hoped to avoid. And he will silence their mobile phones so that they cannot contact their aunt in Saratov, who will hide her nephew, and he will block their accounts so that they cannot bribe the military commander. Or, on the contrary, he will put the "cloud city" to work to track them on their smartphones and take them to the army. Or to prison. And it is not clear which will be better.
Lula, Vucic and Fico will fly home, where their problems await them. But the Russians will stay home, where a dictatorship awaits them, from which there is no way and no place to escape - until the war it started is over. This is exactly what "happened"!
Author: Konstantin Eggert