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On Moscow’s Red Square, Putin, 69, is due to preside over a cavalcade of troops and tanks, rockets and long-range ballistic missiles. Monday’s holiday marks the 77th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, a day of deep emotional resonance for Russians who still recall a staggering death toll of 27 million compatriots in World War II. Yet this is seen by many as a particularly perilous juncture of the war, as Ukraine and its allies wonder whether Putin, livid over a triumph that has eluded him, will lash out in ways not yet seen in this conflict. Instead, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has achieved near-Churchillian stature as a wartime leader, and Western dignitaries arrive near-daily in Kyiv, lavishing cash, weaponry and expressions of support on Zelensky’s government. Putin’s armies have killed thousands, flattened once-vibrant cities, sent more than 5.7 million people fleeing into exile and inflicted billions of dollars in damage to Ukraine, a country of 44 million people that became a sovereign nation more than three decades ago when the Soviet Union imploded. 24 invasion - can in no way be said to have gone according to plan.
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The war on Ukraine - the “special military operation,” as the Kremlin dubbed its Feb. “So he’ll have to proclaim one all the more loudly.” “There’s no victory to announce,” said Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert at University College London. That’s a question Russian President Vladimir Putin will have to answer, at least implicitly, when his country marks one of its biggest and most bombastic patriotic holidays, Victory Day, on Monday - a highly choreographed celebration of Moscow’s military might that awkwardly coincides this year with a smaller neighbor’s improbable defiance in the face of a withering 10-week assault. In a war like this one, what does winning even look like?