Moscow Today 9th of May 2025

"My colleague Lena called to say that she has barely slept all week. “It feels like war here. My house is shaking from the explosions.

There is a constant buzzing of drones above the city.” Our caretaker Oleg also saw the Ukrainian drones in our village just outside Moscow. “A few streets away there was a big impact. We have never experienced anything like this before.”





"Zelensky makes Putin look foolish in the week of the victory over the Nazis ”

Derk Sauer writes a weekly column about Russia for Het Parool

May 9, 2025

It should have been Vladimir Putin's week. Eighty years after the end of the Great Patriotic War, as WWII is called in Russia.

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Going all out with the traditional military parade on Red Square. With a selection of world leaders in the stands. Didn't Donald Trump promise he would be there?

Putin could already see the iconic photo: Trump, Xi Jinping and himself with the Kremlin turrets in the background. The revived echo of the past, when Eisenhower, Churchill and Stalin divided the world together.

Eighty years later, the great powers are back in charge and seem to be able to play land-grabber at will. Trump with Greenland, Xi with Taiwan, Putin with Ukraine.

This scenario seemed within reach. Ukraine almost on its knees, Trump berating Zelensky in the White House. The propagandists on Russian state TV couldn't believe their luck.

How different things look in Moscow this week.

My colleague Lena called to say that she has barely slept all week. “It feels like war here. My house is shaking from the explosions. There is a constant buzzing of drones above the city.” Our caretaker Oleg also saw the Ukrainian drones in our village just outside Moscow. “A few streets away there was a big impact. We have never experienced anything like this before.”

“The internet has been down for days,” said Lena. “You can no longer use your debit card or pay with your card in the supermarket, or order a taxi online. Everything is disrupted.”

Airports in and around Moscow were virtually shut down. Sixty thousand passengers were forced to divert and were stranded in another city. An Aeroflot flight from Bangkok to Moscow turned around in mid-air. In St. Petersburg, passengers were stuck in a plane for hours because there were no aircraft stairs available.

Total chaos.

“This is a huge shock for many Russians. Everyone was so optimistic that thanks to Trump the war would end and then this,” Oleg said.

Instead of a historic May 9 celebration, Putin must now clench his buttocks and hope that no Ukrainian drones appear above Red Square during the parade. The 29 heads of state who make an appearance are a hodgepodge of the usual dictators from countries such as North Korea and Venezuela and fringe presidents from New Guinea and Laos. None of the allies from WWII make an appearance. Only Brazilian President Lula da Silva and of course Xi still provide some cachet – the latter even came reluctantly.

How did it get to this point?

The three-day ceasefire that Putin announced for this weekend ended in a painful failure. Why not immediately go for the thirty days that both Trump and Zelensky have been pushing for so long? It seemed an easy way for the Russians to score the most points in the negotiations that would follow: recognition of Crimea, freezing the existing front lines and a guarantee that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO. And that without any security guarantees from the US.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has tea with Vladimir Putin.



But that wasn't enough for Putin and his Kremlin hawks, who continue to harp on about the "roots of evil" — code for dismantling Ukraine as a sovereign state.

What caused this diplomatic blunder remains to be seen. Did the Russians think they were certain they had Trump completely in their pocket? Quite possibly. I think the feverish war atmosphere in Russia is also a crucial factor. Putin became convinced in recent months – after all the previous setbacks – that the Russian army was about to overrun the Ukrainian positions.

His generals must have told him that too. The TV propagandists convinced the Russians that victory was within reach. Putin could not and still cannot imagine that the Ukrainians, in his eyes, cowardly, can stand up to the mighty Russia.

Therefore, dragging out negotiations with the US until Ukraine collapsed seemed the best strategy.

But Zelensky was once again too quick for Putin. With his tête-à-tête with Trump in the Vatican, he once again won the hearts of the world and manoeuvred the American president into a position where he had to do something for Ukraine. The largely symbolic raw materials deal was a further step to stroke Trump's ego.

With his 'attack is the best defense' strategy, Zelensky is making a fool of Putin in this week of May.

Of course, the war is far from won for the Ukrainians – Putin is certainly not giving up easily – but thanks to Zelensky's bold actions, there is at least some hope again.

Derk Sauer is publisher of The Moscow Times and columnist for Het Parool.

He is also the founder of the Russian newspaper Vedomosti and former publisher of RBK Gazeta.





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