Russia shut down airports and temporarily cut mobile internet access for many users in Moscow on Tuesday, as it tightened security before the 9 May Victory Day parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The parade – Russia’s foremost national celebration – has already been scaled back and will proceed without heavy military hardware for the first time in nearly two decades, amid fears of long-range Ukrainian drone strikes.
Ukraine has recently demonstrated its ability to penetrate Moscow’s dense air defence systems: on Monday morning, a drone struck a high-rise apartment building just a few miles from the Kremlin.
In what appeared to be an effort to shield the military parade, Moscow earlier this month declared a unilateral ceasefire with Ukraine for 8-9 May and warned of a “massive missile strike” on central Kyiv if it were violated.
Victory Day has been central to Vladimi Putin’s vision of Russian identity throughout his more than 25 years in power. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has intensified its use of the annual celebration, with Putin deploying the occasion to frame and justify the current war.
Ukraine dismissed the proposal as a cynical ploy to protect the parade from drone attacks. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, responded by announcing a separate truce from 6 May, saying it was “not serious” to expect Kyiv to observe a ceasefire tied to a Russian military holiday.
The Ukraine president’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, later said that Ukraine’s ceasefire proposal showed it was ready for a longer peace.
“The ceasefire introduced by Ukraine demonstrates a true desire for peace on our part. Not tied to any dates for the sake of imposing ideological dogmas, but for the sake of preserving human life and restoring security,” Budanov wrote on Telegram.
“If the ceasefire announced by the president is mutual, we will extend it. And this will give us … a small … hope for the establishment of lasting peace,” he added. Moscow has not yet commented on Ukraine’s proposal.
Security in the Russian capital has been visibly tightened in the run-up to the parade, with checkpoints set up across the city and snipers and machine-gun crews deployed on Kremlin towers.
Residents on Tuesday woke to dead mobile signals across Moscow. The disruption hit workers hardest, with taxi drivers saying they were unable to receive fares, and delivery couriers forced to knock on customers’ doors and ask to use home wifi just to mark orders as complete. By midday, access appeared to have been largely restored, but more outages are expected in the coming days.
Russian officials have previously justified such shutdowns as necessary to protect the capital from drone attacks and acts of sabotage.
Months of rolling outages have pushed some Russians back to walkie-talkies and pagers, sparking anger nationwide and chipping away at Putin’s approval ratings.
The Russian Orthodox church on Tuesday urged citizens not to worry about the widespread internet outages, suggesting they use the disruption to reflect on “saving the soul” and acts of charity. A senior church official said the blackouts should prompt thoughts about the “fragility of technological civilisation” and that the “omnipotence of technology pales before eternity”.
All four of Moscow’s airports also suspended operations on Tuesday over unspecified security concerns. Last year, Ukraine sought to disrupt the lead-up to the event by launching swarms of explosive-laden drones at Moscow, causing travel chaos, with thousands of flights cancelled or delayed.
Alongside the heightened security presence on Moscow’s streets, Russia has also stepped up personal protection for Putin in recent months, according to a European intelligence report cited by the outlet iStories.
Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO), which is responsible for guarding senior officials, has significantly tightened security around the president. He is said to be spending more time in underground bunkers, closely managing the war effort, and has become increasingly removed from civilian life.
The report added that cooks, bodyguards and photographers who work with the president are also banned from travelling on public transport, amid fears in the Kremlin of a possible assassination attack on the president.