For the past few days, Muscovites have been enjoying a not-quite-ordinary spectacle. Several warplanes flew over the capital as part of the preparations for the May 9 parade. This day, which marks the triumph of the USSR against Nazi Germany during the Second World War, is a particularly unifying moment across the country. “For Russia, May 9 is a national holiday, an important military meeting and it is almost certain that, for President Putin, May 9 must be a day of victory”, explained Emmanuel Macron at the microphone of RTL in early April.
If it is very unlikely that the Kremlin will take advantage of these celebrations to announce a military victory in Ukraine, this parade will nevertheless be an opportunity for the Russians to show the West the little nuggets of their military arsenal. One element has rightly caught the eye of observers: the release of a particularly strategic military aircraft from the Russian army, the Ilyushin IL-80. Nicknamed “Doomsday plane” by English speakers or “the plane of the apocalypse”, like its American equivalent the Boeing E-4, this giant aircraft designed during the Cold War acts as a flying bunker to protect senior officials of the Kremlin in the event of a nuclear attack.
The characteristics of this windowless craft, sixty meters long and forty-eight wide, are strictly classified. The device, which must also serve as a command post, is supposed to be able to fly for several days without landing thanks to in-flight refueling. According to the DailyMail, a video would show its flyby on the outskirts of Moscow on Wednesday morning. Russian officials have also insisted that it will be presented during the parade in Red Square on Monday. It has been twelve years since the Russians took the Ilyushin IL-80 out of its hangar, its last official presentation dating back to the parade on May 9, 2010.
The Kremlin is stepping up its nuclear threats
In a context of war in Ukraine, the highlighting of the machine is very symbolic. Russian propaganda around the nuclear threat is indeed running at full speed. While the American Congress must pass a colossal new budget allocated to arms deliveries to kyiv and the European Commission has just announced an embargo on Russian hydrocarbonsthe Kremlin is increasing the pressure on Westerners.
For several days, Russian state television Rossiya-1 has been broadcasting, for example, images of simulations of nuclear attacks affecting London, Paris or even Berlin. We see presenter Olga Skabeïeva explaining how long it would take the latest generation ballistic missile called “Sarmat” and nicknamed “Satan 2”, to reach European capitals from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad: “To Berlin, it takes count 106 seconds. From Kaliningrad to Paris 200 seconds. If it’s London you’re interested in 202 seconds.” However, these threats should be put into perspective, as Checknews explains“the calculations presented by the Kremlin chain are made for a missile which is in the development phase, and from an enclave where no firing silo is present”.
On Tuesday, Irish MPs also condemned Russian television for viewing a simulated submarine missile launch aimed at British shores, report it Guardian. Faced with the indignation of Irish representatives, the Russian Embassy in Dublin dissociated itself from the television channel in a press release: “The views and presentations of the television program are those of the editors. The official position of Russia has always been that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it must never be started.”
It remains to be seen how the Kremlin will react in the coming weeks to the resistance of the Ukrainian army. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Western military and intelligence aid to Ukraine was preventing Russia from quickly ending its offensive in its neighbor. However, despite the nuclear threats erected by Moscow, Westerners are not afraid to establish a balance of power with Vladimir Putin.