Putin rallies Russians as Wagner leader renews threat to quit Bakhmut

Russian president Vladimir Putin invoked the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany as he sought to rally support for his invasion of Ukraine, where a Moscow-backed warlord renewed a threat to withdraw his fighters from the grinding battle for Bakhmut.

Repeating outlandish justifications for his attack on Ukraine, Mr Putin claimed his country was the victim of a “real war” unleashed by a West that wants to destroy Russia with help from a “criminal regime” in Kyiv and “neo-Nazi scum from around the world”.

“Today, our civilisation is at a crucial turning point. A real war is being waged against our country again,” Mr Putin said on Victory Day, when Russia marks the end of the second World War.

“The Western globalist elites … seem to have forgotten what the Nazis’ insane claims of global dominance led to. They forgot who destroyed that monstrous, total evil, who stood up for their native land and did not spare their own lives to liberate the peoples of Europe,” he added in a speech made on Red Square before a parade of troops and army weaponry.

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Mr Putin, a former KGB officer who has lamented the demise of the Soviet Union, accused the West of “cynically and blatantly preparing a new march on Russia (using) neo-Nazi scum from around the world.

“Their goal – and there is nothing new about it – is to break apart and destroy our country … to completely break down the system of global security and international law, to choke off any sovereign centres of development,” said Mr Putin.

Praising the Russian troops attacking Ukraine, he said the “battles that were decisive for our motherland always became patriotic, national and sacred … The entire country has united to support our heroes. Everyone is ready to help, everyone prays for you.”

Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced in Ukraine since Mr Putin launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, but his forces now control less than one-fifth of the country and face a looming counter-attack by its military.

More than 20 Russian cities cancelled planned military parades and the procession on Red Square was smaller than usual – with no air force fly-past and only one Soviet-era tank on display – following 14 months of heavy fighting in Ukraine and a recent spate of drone attacks on Russia, including a strike on the Kremlin that Moscow blamed on Kyiv.

Russia has intensified drone and rocket attacks on Ukraine over the last fortnight, and Kyiv officials said the country’s air defences shot down 23 of 25 cruise missiles fired by Moscow’s military in the early hours of Tuesday.

The attacks did not disrupt a visit to Kyiv by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on what the EU, and now Ukraine, mark as Europe Day.

“Ukraine is on the front line of the defence of everything we Europeans cherish: our liberty, our democracy, our freedom of thought and of speech,” she said alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “Courageously Ukraine is fighting for the ideals of Europe that we celebrate today. In Russia Putin and his regime have destroyed these values.”

Mr Zelenskiy said Russia’s forces had failed in their objective to seize the eastern city of Bakhmut by May 9th, and the head of the Wagner mercenary group that is leading the attack on the city blamed Moscow officials again for withholding arms from his fighters.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said that if, in a few days,”there is no ammunition then we will leave our positions”. He also accused an army unit of fleeing Bakhmut and “exposing a section of the front that was nearly 2km long and 500m deep. Luckily we managed to seal it.”