Moscow Victory Day Parade

• 1. Introduction

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  The Moscow Victory Day Parade opens each the 9th of May with an announcer's voice ringing across Red Square. "Attention, this is Moscow speaking and showing," it declares. "Listen to and watch Red Square." Thousands of soldiers already stand in formation as the ceremony begins. The President of Russia takes the grandstand as guest of honor, a role fixed by his constitutional position as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The parade commemorates the moment Nazi Germany's forces surrendered to the Red Army, an event Russia calls the Great Patriotic War. For much of the twentieth century, though, that kind of display was rare on the Soviet calendar. Anthropologist Sergey Ushakin has argued that parades like this one are built to fuse present and past, making the bond between generations feel physical. Longtime parade commander Oleg Salyukov offered a different frame, calling the event "a celebration for people, not a show of militarism." What turned a rare Soviet ritual into an annual fixture? And what does it take, hour by hour, to move that many people across one square?

• 2. Ritual Becomes Annual Rite

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  On the 24th of June 1945, Soviet forces staged the first Red Square parade honoring the defeat of Nazi Germany, joined by a small detachment from the First Polish Army. It ran for hours, the longest and largest parade the Soviet capital had seen, involving 40,000 Red Army soldiers and 1,850 military vehicles. The parade actually followed victory by more than a month; Germany's surrender had come on the 9th of May. Preparations moved fast: a preliminary rehearsal took place at Khodynka Aerodrome, followed by a general rehearsal on Red Square on the 22nd of June. The next day, the Grand Kremlin Palace hosted a reception honoring the parade's participants.

  The Soviet Union then held off for two decades, returning to Red Square only for the 20th anniversary parade in 1965. Two more jubilee parades followed, marking the 40th anniversary in 1985 and the 45th in 1990. Soviet leaders favored the October Revolution Day parade, held every autumn, over an annual Victory Day event. Parades stopped again between 1991 and 1994; First Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Burbulis judged them impractical given the state of the country's finances at the time.

  The 1995 parade marked the golden jubilee of the Soviet victory and the first Victory Day parade of the new Russian Federation, held four years after the Soviet Union's collapse. Organizers split it into two parts: a full military parade on Poklonnaya Hill and a veterans ceremony on Red Square. Every year since, the parade has returned to Red Square on the 9th of May, with one exception. The 75th anniversary parade in 2020 was postponed to the 24th of June because of the coronavirus pandemic. In April 2026, the Kremlin announced that year's parade would run without its usual display of military equipment, citing concerns over Ukrainian attacks.

• 3. Inside The Ceremony

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  An estimated 14,000 military personnel gather in battalions on Red Square on the morning of the parade, including a regiment of female cadets and youth cadets. More than 210 vehicles and 3,800 vehicle crews assemble separately on Tverskaya Street, just north of Manezhnaya Square. A company of historical Red Army vehicles, roughly 36 strong, lines up alongside modern hardware from the Armed Forces and the National Guard. It is built around the T-34, the GAZ-67 and the SU-100. At air bases outside the city, including Kubinka, more than 88 aircraft assemble with their crews for the flypast.

  The President and Prime Minister arrive at the grandstand facing Lenin's Mausoleum at 9:55 am Moscow Standard Time. They greet the Chief of the General Staff, service commanders, deputy ministers and veterans, along with representatives of the Suvorov and Nakhimov Schools. Nearby stands hold veterans, their families, and relatives of personnel killed in action. Linemen and markers from the 154th Preobrazhensky Independent Commandant's Regiment, in Imperial-style uniforms, position themselves to mark the distance troops will march. The parade commander, typically a Colonel General, takes his place in an Aurus Senat limousine, a role held by a Zil until 2018.

  The colour guard of the 154th Regiment's 1st Honor Guard Company marches in to the tune of The Sacred War. It carries both the Flag of Russia and the Victory Banner, taking position at the northwest end of the square, facing the State Historical Museum. The Minister of Defence is then driven to the center of the square. There, the parade commander formally reports that the troops of the Moscow Garrison have assembled. The Minister greets each contingent in turn, and every one answers with a threefold shout of Oorah. As he returns to the grandstand, the bands strike up Slavsya from A Life for the Tsar.

  In three Soviet-era jubilee parades, limousines also inspected personnel of the mobile column at Manezhnaya Square. That echoed the mounted inspection of the original 1945 ceremony, which included cavalry, tachankas and horse artillery. The President's keynote address follows a fanfare, usually Govovin's Moscow Fanfare, and has included a moment of silence since 2015. A threefold cry of Ura answers the address, after which the Massed Bands play the national anthem. A ceremonial battery firing the 76 mm divisional gun M1942, known as the ZiS-3, sounds a 21-gun salute. In 2009, Defence Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov ended the earlier practice of having soldiers sing all three verses of the anthem themselves. He explained that on Red Square their "voices would be swallowed by the echo."

  The march past opens with the Corps of Drums of the Moscow Military Music College, a tradition dating to 1938. They play a march composed by Lieutenant General Valery Khalilov, who led the Moscow area's massed bands from 2002 to 2016. The 154th Regiment's colour guard follows, and in jubilee years a column of veterans and historical units, sometimes joined by Kuban Cossacks, marches behind them. Youth contingents and the Combined Arms Academy fill out the ground column. It closes with cadets of the Moscow Higher Military Command School. Their march past has been held since the 1967 October Revolution Day parade, in memory of cadets who fought in the 1941 Battle of Moscow.

  A single T-34/85 tank carrying the Victory Banner leads the mobile column in non-jubilee years, followed by tens of modern vehicles and equipment. Crew commanders salute the stands as they pass, except for crews of multiple rocket launchers and mobile intercontinental missiles. The parade closes with a flypast of tens of Air Force aircraft. Poor weather has scrubbed that finale before, as it did during the 2022 parade.

• 4. Building The Parade

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  Organizers at the Ministry of Defence begin planning in the last two months of the previous year. They settle the parade's size, its units and equipment, and, on jubilee years, which foreign troops to invite. Regular participants spend this period drilling at their home units. Full rehearsals then begin in March at a training center in the village of Alabino, in the Moscow Oblast. Dressed in working uniforms, participants run through the entire ceremony as closely as conditions allow.

  In the last week of April, rehearsals shift to Red Square itself and are conducted in the evening. The flypast is practiced separately from the Kubinka airfield, at times without any ground or mobile columns joining in. The final dress rehearsal takes place 2-3 days before the parade and is typically live-streamed on outlets such as Ruptly.

• 5. Symbols On The Square

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  2008 marked the return of the mobile column to the Victory Day Parade, an element last seen in 1991 and dropped in 1995. It had been removed to make way for reconstruction of the Iberian Gate and Chapel. That year also introduced an airshow. It also became the first major Russian military parade broadcast live worldwide, when RT carried it for the first time. An MC has announced the parade since 2007. Yevgeny Khoroshevtsev held the role through 2020, also serving as announcer for the President's protocol events; his protégé Anton Suntsov took over in 2021.

  Before 1945, parade officers reviewed troops from horseback. The first parade convertible appeared on Red Square in 1940, when a roofless ZIS-102 phaeton led the armored vehicle column in the last pre-war parade. When officials proposed switching from horses to cars, Stalin refused, saying, "Let's not change the good tradition of the Soviet army." The first Victory Parade was inspected from horseback instead, on a stallion named Idol. Cars replaced horses in 1953, the year Stalin died, when the ZIS-110B, developed during the war, took over the inspection role. The ZIL-115V arrived in 1981, with three convertibles built at the Likhachev Plant. It continued in Victory Day parades until 2009. In 2019, Aurus Senat armored convertibles replaced the ZILs. Two personnel from the 147th Automobile Base drive these vehicles.

  In 2005, the historical column wore replicas of the uniforms worn in the original 1945 parade, part of a tradition reserved for jubilee years. The column's order runs from Red Army infantry and tank forces through partisans, border guardsmen and Cossacks. It ends with a cavalry squadron of the Kremlin Regiment and, in some years, servicemen who took part in the original 1945 parade. In 2021, the Ground Forces held the first ceremony awarding challenge cups to the parade's best participants. Nine categories were judged, including best parade crew and best mechanized column crew. The cups are kept permanently at the Office of the Military Commandant of Moscow.

  Since August 2010, the icon of the Smolensk Saviour has been uncovered above the Kremlin tower. Any parade inspector holding military rank must now remove his headgear and cross himself before inspecting troops. Each contingent has carried historical military colors from the 1942 and 1944 patterns since 1996, honoring those who served in the Second World War. In 2018, the 1st Honor Guard Company performed an exhibition drill in the parade's finale, its first appearance there since 2007. The moment marked the centennial of the Red Army's founding in 1918. Since the 60th anniversary parade, a wreath-laying ceremony has followed at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Around 1,100 bandsmen make up the massed bands, drawn from more than 40 ensembles based in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Kaliningrad and Kostroma. Between 15 and 40 bands typically perform at any one march past. Each band's Senior Director holds a repertoire briefing with band leaders at the end of every year. Together they map out exactly what to emphasize in each piece before the next parade.

• 6. Foreign Faces On Red Square

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  Inviting foreign leaders to the parade has been a jubilee tradition since 1995, with one exception in 2000. East Germany's Prime Minister Willi Stoph attended in 1965, decades before that pattern took hold. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev came in 2016 and returned as Chairman of the Security Council in 2019. Moldova's President Igor Dodon attended in 2017, and 2018 brought both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon attended in 2021.

  The only foreign contingent at the original 1945 parade was a color squad from the First Polish Army. In 1985, veterans of the Polish 1st Infantry Division and the Czechoslovak 1st Corps marched in the veterans procession. President Dmitry Medvedev invited foreign troops back in 2010, the first time since the Soviet collapse. Contingents came from France, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. At Turkmenistan's request, its contingent that year was led by an officer on horseback, with the horse flown in from Ashgabat.

  After a five-year gap, the 2015 platinum jubilee parade brought back most CIS units, excluding Moldova and Ukraine, and added first-time participants. They included the Guard of the Serbian Armed Forces, the Beijing Garrison Honor Guard Battalion of China, the Mongolian State Honor Guard and a unit called the Grenadiers. The 2020 parade brought back every 2015 participant, along with Turkmenistan and Moldova, both returning after a 10-year absence. Turkmenistan's delegation arrived with two color guards riding in GAZ-M20 Pobeda cars. One carried the national flag and the other the combat flag of the 748th Infantry Regiment.