Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin is sending a stern “doomsday” warning to the West as he leads celebrations for the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany at the height of its military campaign against Ukraine. Putin will perform in front of the grave of Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, in a grand display of Russian military power with soldiers, tanks, missiles and ICBMs carrying nuclear warheads.
Putin, despite the extreme isolation imposed by the West, will perform on Red Square before the parade of soldiers, tanks, missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Russian Defense Ministry announced that Tu-160 supersonic fighters and strategic bombers would take part in the parade overflight of St. Basil’s Cathedral, and the L-80 Doomsday command aircraft, for the first time since 2010, would carry high-ranking officers in the event of a nuclear war. The L-80 was designed to become the flight command center of the President of Russia in the event of such a scenario. It is rich in technology, but the specifics of it are a Russian state secret.
The 69-year-old Kremlin leader often compared the war in Ukraine to the challenge the Soviet Union faced when Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany invaded his country in 1941.
