On the menu today: The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started four years and two months ago, has become background noise in the American news cycle. But just because Americans are (understandably) focused on the war against Iran and gas prices doesn’t mean that the situation in that Eastern European war isn’t changing. The black box of Russian government and society make it tougher to tell what’s really going on behind the scenes — hence the field of “Kremlinology” — but bit by bit, there are signs that something is changing. There are no tanks available for this year’s Victory Day parade in Red Square. The Russians announced a unilateral two-day cease-fire in the war against Ukraine. Moscow airports are experiencing shutdowns, and Muscovites’ cell service is being disrupted. Even once-skeptical analysts think something is changing behind the walls of the Kremlin.
Subdued Celebrations for the Kremlin
May 9 is Victory Day in Russia, a major national holiday commemorating the Soviet role in the allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Each year, the celebration features a massive military parade on Red Square in Moscow.
It is the one day of the year when the whole world knows exactly where Vladimir Putin is going to be, seated in the central viewing stand erected directly in front of Vladimir Lenin’s Mausoleum. The latitude and longitude coordinates of Lenin’s Mausoleum are 55°45′13″ North, 37°37′11″ East.
There is no shortage of people who would be happy to see Putin seated in the Anwar Sadat Memorial Seat in the viewing stand on Saturday.
The Russian government is genuinely worried about some sort of drone attack, sleeper agents, assassination attempt, or some other force disrupting the parade or targeting Putin. From The Guardian:
Russia shut down airports and temporarily cut mobile internet access for many users in Moscow on Tuesday, as it tightened security before the 9 May Victory Day parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Security in the Russian capital has been visibly tightened in the run-up to the parade, with checkpoints set up across the city and snipers and machine-gun crews deployed on Kremlin towers. . . .
Residents on Tuesday awoke to dead mobile signals across Moscow. The disruption hit workers hardest, with taxi drivers saying they were unable to receive fares, and delivery couriers forced to knock on customers’ doors and ask to use home wifi just to mark orders as complete. . . .
Months of rolling outages have pushed some Russians back to walkie-talkies and pagers, sparking anger nationwide and chipping away at Putin’s approval ratings. . . .
All four of Moscow’s airports suspended operations on Tuesday over unspecified security concerns. Last year, Ukraine sought to disrupt the lead-up to the event by launching swarms of explosive-laden drones at Moscow, causing travel chaos, with thousands of flights cancelled or delayed.
And the Russian government has good reason to be worried about Ukrainian drones over Moscow’s skies. From the BBC:
A Ukrainian drone hit an upmarket residential high-rise in Moscow in the early hours of Monday, causing visible damage to the façade of the building but no casualties.
It was the third night in a row the Russian capital came under attack from drones, days before Russia holds a scaled-back parade to mark the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. . . .
Two other drones were intercepted, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Vnukovo and Domodedovo international airports suspended operations overnight.
A total of 117 were intercepted over several Russian regions between Sunday and Monday, the Russian defense ministry said. Sixty alone were aimed at the region of St Petersburg in what the regional governor Aleksandr Drodzhenko said had been a “massive” attack.
The residential building that was hit is located in an upscale neighborhood in south-west Moscow, less than 10km (six miles) from the Kremlin and Red Square, where Saturday’s parade will be held.
For what it’s worth, Putin announced a cease-fire, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country would observe a truce beginning at 12 a.m. on Wednesday and respond in kind to Russia’s actions from that moment on.
This year’s Victory Parade is going to feel different in several ways. Besides the enhanced security, the Associated Press notes that this year’s parade . . . will be much less of a parade: “Russia’s traditional parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II will take place next week without tanks, missiles and other military equipment, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. It will be the first time in nearly two decades — and in Russia’s 4-year-old war in Ukraine — that no military equipment will rumble through Moscow’s Red Square.”
(I don’t understand why the Russians can’t find any spare tanks these days. I’ve seen lots of Russian tanks and military equipment on display in squares on my past visits to Kyiv. Of course, all of those have been burned to a crisp. I’m sure somewhere out there, Douglas Macgregor is arguing that the fact that the Russians don’t have any tanks to spare for military parades is really a sign that the Ukrainian army is about to collapse and the Red Army will be rolling into Kyiv any day now.)
Two days ago, the Russian independent media source Important Stories shared what it claimed was a report from a European Union country’s intelligence service. Among the highlights:
Since the beginning of March 2026, the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin have been concerned about a leak of sensitive information and, at the same time, about the risk of a plot or coup attempt against the Russian president. In particular, he fears the use of drones for a possible assassination attempt by members of the Russian political elite.
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Visitors to the Presidential Administration undergo two levels of screening, including a full body search by FSO officers.
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The FSO has significantly reduced the list of locations regularly visited by the president; neither he nor his family visit their usual residences in the Moscow region and Valdai anymore.
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Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Putin has often taken refuge in renovated bunkers, particularly in the Krasnodar region, where he may work for weeks, while Russian media continue public communication using pre-recorded footage.
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No visits to military infrastructure have been organized this year, in contrast to frequent trips in 2025.
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Communication networks in certain districts of Moscow are periodically shut down.
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Personnel working near Putin are now prohibited from using mobile phones; they must use devices without internet access.
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These employees are also banned from using public transportation and move exclusively using FSO transport; surveillance systems have been installed in the homes of cooks, photographers, and bodyguards.
Putin’s always been paranoid, and some analysts speculate that he lost some of his marbles during his two years of extreme isolation during the Covid pandemic. You might have thought Putin’s paranoia was already turned up to eleven, but apparently recent successful assassinations of Russian generals have cranked it up even higher.
There are some parts of the Important Stories report that are verifiable. Shortly before Christmas last year, a car bomb killed the head of the Russian General Staff’s Directorate for Operational Training, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov; he was the third senior Russian general killed within a year.
The Important Stories report describes a tense, angry meeting of a small group of members of Russia’s Security Council on Christmas Day. The military leaders blamed the intelligence leaders, the intelligence leaders blamed the military leaders, and the head of the national guard claimed he was denied sufficient manpower — classic finger-pointing and blame-shifting all around. Putin reportedly had to calm everyone else down.
Do we know for certain if this account is true? No. Does it sound plausible, considering what we know about the situation? Yes.
Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center senior fellow Tatiana Stanovaya’s analysis of Russia has emphasized the intractable nature of the government’s war aims and the unlikelihood of any significant change in Moscow’s stance on the war (or much of anything else). In February, she wrote:
For the Kremlin, the war is existential. It’s not just about seizing control of towns and villages so much as a confrontation with the West taking place on Ukrainian territory. Predictions of the impending collapse of the Russian economy are not without grounds, but they miss the key point: that for the Kremlin, ending the war without Russia’s interests being taken into account would not simply be a defeat, but would amount to condemning Russia to its doom.
As long as Putin is in power, Russia isn’t paralyzed by widespread protests, and there is at least some money left in the budget for weapons, the war will continue. The Kremlin will not make significant concessions even if faced with a protracted financial and economic crisis. Rather, such a crisis, should it arise, would first lead to political change and only then to a revision of the war’s goals by the country’s new leadership.
But yesterday, on X, Stanovaya’s tone sounded different:
Recent developments inside Russia suggest the system is struggling to cope with mounting pressures. These include growing domestic strains, behind-the-scenes maneuvering among elites, rumors of a coup d’état, a tighter and more reactive grip on control, fears of losing that control, and increasing exposure to Ukrainian strikes and assassinations. All this is unfolding against a worsening external backdrop: a destabilized Middle East and stalemate over Iran, a distracted Trump, and a more militarized (including nuclear-oriented) Europe.
For the first time in years of war, there may be a shift. Pressures have reached a point where too many actors inside Russia face a new reality: the status quo is starting to threaten their own position. If nothing changes, it makes survival difficult, if not impossible.
Until recently, many assumed that Putin had a plan, even if it was simply to keep the war going. Now there are growing doubts as to whether such a plan exists. And even if it does, it may imply political or physical ruin for some. Ironically, after years of pursuing a “wait and see” approach towards the West and, in part, Ukraine, Putin has now become the object of a similar approach from the Americans — an uncomfortable position for Russians.
The visible government anxiety around the Victory Day parade would seem to affirm what Stanovaya’s headline asserts: that “Something Is Shifting Inside Russia.” But whether that nebulous shift is a real step toward an end to the war is far from clear.
ADDENDUM: As our Noah Rothman observes, the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles were not a result of climate change, as many Democrats asserted during them and in the immediate aftermath. The wildfire was deliberately set, and it was deliberately set by an angry young man who wanted to emulate Luigi Mangione, accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson just weeks earlier.