Moscow scaled back its annual May victory parade, stripping the event of its usual heavy military hardware due to fears of Ukrainian drone strikes. On The Bulwark Podcast, foreign policy analyst Anne Applebaum detailed this sudden shift in the Kremlin's optics, noting that "this year it was much shorter" and went ahead without the usual hardware "because they were afraid of" security threats.
This scaling back highlights a deeper anxiety gripping the Russian capital, despite state media's attempts to project absolute control. Anne Applebaum observed that beneath the official bravado, there is a palpable "sense of shakiness and instability" as commentators openly question the war's progress, asking, "Why aren't we winning? Why aren't we trying harder?"
Meanwhile, the city is being discussed in entirely different, more bizarre contexts over on the mega-podcasts. On The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan bypassed geopolitical anxieties altogether, using Moscow as a hypothetical coordinate for psychic espionage. While discussing remote viewing experiments, Rogan casually remarked that "Moscow is number 654."
This stark divergence in coverage shows how Moscow remains a dual symbol: a highly vulnerable, paranoid regime to serious foreign policy analysts, and a classic Cold War mystery box to the internet's conspiracy theorists. As Ukraine's drone capabilities advance, the Kremlin will likely find it increasingly difficult to hide its defensive anxieties behind empty parade grounds.