Ukraine’s strikes force Putin into bunkers as Russia scales back May 9 parade

9 May, 03:18 PM

Dictator Vladimir Putin at the parade in Moscow on May 9, 2026. (Photo: Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via REUTERS)

Four years after launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin now appears to be the one on the run, moving from one underground shelter to another as he faces Ukraine’s growing fleet of armed drones.

While President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked the start of the invasion by appearing outside his office on Bankova Street to show open resistance, Putin has steadily retreated, isolating himself inside what Peter Dickinson, one of the West’s leading scholars on Ukraine and Russia, described as an archipelago of massive underground bunkers.

“Ukraine’s drone and missile strikes are a key reason why Putin has increasingly retreated to his bunkers,” Dickinson, editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert, told Forbes.

Dickinson said Putin is also hiding because “he also fears his own people and knows all the talk of 80% approval ratings is nonsense, and is well aware that he has enemies within the Russian establishment.”

“But primarily he [Putin] knows Ukraine has the ability to strike deep inside Russia and has a very sophisticated intelligence service that has penetrated deep into the Russian state apparatus — so he is becoming more and more paranoid,” Dickinson said.

Since the start of his rule, Putin has tried to create the illusion of a revived “Russian superpower,” including by staging lavish May 9 Victory Day celebrations. Under Putin, the parades became far larger. Russia showed the world intercontinental ballistic missiles and its most advanced tanks, turning the parades into a “pseudo-religion with its own saints, symbols, dogmas and heretics.”

After losing huge amounts of equipment in Ukraine and facing constant Ukrainian drone attacks, staging a display of Russian “military might” in central Moscow has become impossible.

“Putin’s decision to scale back the parade undoubtedly reflects Russia’s weakness and loss of status. Few now regard the Russian army as one of the most powerful in the world, as they did before 2022,” Dickinson said of the Kremlin’s decision to limit the 2026 military parade.

Putin’s retreat from lavish celebrations confirms Ukraine’s emergence as a major military power, Forbes said. Ukraine’s Defense Forces are now considered Europe’s most important military force, outnumbering the armies of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other leading powers.

By keeping his intercontinental missiles out of the “almost sacred” ceremony, Putin acknowledged that he can no longer guarantee security in his own capital. That deals a major blow to his authority, analysts said.

“As the invasion of Ukraine fails, Putin’s position is becoming increasingly shaky. He knows the war has gone wrong, and he realizes that more and more Russians now recognize this fact,” Dickinson said.

Putin is retreating further into isolation and narrowing his circle of advisers because he distrusts Russia’s elite.

“While Russia is not yet on the brink of defeat in Ukraine, Putin has no obvious path to victory, and he cannot explain his vision for continuing the war,” Dickinson said.

With discontent already growing in Russian society, Putin is likely to respond with even greater isolation and new waves of repression, analysts concluded.

Moscow held its May 9 Victory Day parade for the first time in years without military hardware. It lasted 45 minutes, making it the shortest parade in Russia’s modern history.

The celebration was accompanied by large-scale internet shutdowns in central Moscow. The parade was held with a limited number of foreign guests.

Dictator Putin, speaking on Red Square, claimed “victories” in the war in Ukraine despite successful Ukrainian attacks on targets deep inside Russia and Russia’s slowing advance along the front line.

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