The Night Before Russia's Victory Day Parade

Should and could Ukraine attack Russia's Victory Day Parade in Moscow? A special assessment 24 hours before the parade begins.

Image: Russian government

It’s the night before Victory Day, and all through Moscow, lots of air defenders were stirring…

OK, so I ripped off an old Christmas story a little bit. But, the day before Putin’s big parade in Red Square, I thought I would explore the potential for a Ukrainian attack.

Many have speculated that Putin’s rationale for his recent three-day truce offer was to ensure that he had an uninterrupted 9 May Victory Day parade. It would be embarrassing in the extreme, particularly with his good mate President Xi attending, to have some kind of Ukrainian attack or drone fly past during his big day.

This is possibly the reason for Putin’s unilateral truce offer. But I think that the more likely driver was to keep stringing Donald Trump along, and ensure America remains engaged in peace negotiations after Trump’s comments about Putin in the wake of his recent meeting with Zelenskyy in Rome.

Regardless, the Ukrainian president rejected the 3-day peace offer.

More intriguingly, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence General Budanov intimated in his own way that the Russians should watch the skies on 9 May. His actual quote was “bring ear plugs”.

Now, this could be just his way of messing with the minds of the Russians. Afterall, that is part of Budanov’s job. But what might be the strategic rationale for a Ukrainian attack against the 9 May Victory Day parade in Moscow? To answer this, I think there are several key issues that need to be resolved. These are:

1. Can Ukraine penetrate Russian air defence networks and get its drones to Red Square?

2. What might be the advantages of such an attack?

3. What would be the potential downsides of such an attack?

4. Is this just a big deception plan so Ukraine can do something significant elsewhere?

Let’s examine each of these questions in order.

Can Ukraine penetrate Russian air defence networks and get its drones to Red Square?

Ukraine has proven on multiple occasions that it can penetrate Russian air defences and gets its drones to Moscow. It conducted several small-scale attacks in 2023 and 2024. The largest attack saw at least 90 Ukrainian drones shot down over Moscow in March this year.

Ukraine has also conducted drone attacks on the last three days. This has slowed or stopped traffic at Moscow airports including the one - Vnukovo Airport - where VIPs fly into. As CNN has reported:

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said in a Telegram post Tuesday that at least 19 Ukrainian drones were destroyed on their approach to the capital overnight, one night after Russian air defenses shot down four drones near the city.

These recent drone flights could just be probes to establish where the Russians have deployed additional air defence systems and how much they are moving them around. Of course, these drone missions could also be just part of a much larger deception plan, which I will explore below.

The Russians are not total idiots, and as I written previously, they have learned and adapted over the last couple of years. They have evolved their air, missile and drone defences regularly. It is a tough network to penetrate, but as the Ukrainians have demonstrated, it does have weaknesses that can be exploited.

But to answer the central question, the Ukrainians are very capable of penetrating Russian airspace and flying drones to Moscow. So, yes, it is within the realm of the possible that they could do this. The Russians certainly appear to think so.