LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
May 10, 2026
Heather Cox Richardson
May 11, 2026
There were two very different celebrations in Russia and in Hungary yesterday.
Russia celebrated Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Most of the Allies honor Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, on May 8, the day in 1945 that jubilant celebrations broke out as news spread of the Nazis’ unconditional surrender in Reims, France, on May 7, 1945. The Russians celebrate victory over the Nazis on May 9, for by the time the Germans surrendered to the Soviets in Berlin, the time difference meant it was already May 9 in Moscow.
May 9 is an important national holiday in Russia, marked with parades and honoring of relatives who fought in the war. In 2005, when Russia was still embracing democratic nations, more than fifty world leaders attended the sixtieth anniversary of Victory Day, including President George W. Bush; the leaders of China, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, and Denmark; the secretary-general of the United Nations; and the president of the European Commission.
But for the past several years, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has used the event to demonstrate the nation’s military strength and to rally supporters behind him and the war in Ukraine. He has showcased troops and military hardware in a grand parade in Moscow’s Red Square.
This year, as Zahra Ullah of CNN reported, Putin followed his usual pattern of equating the troops fighting in Ukraine with those who fought in World War II. As he has often framed the war as a struggle against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), he claimed today’s soldiers for Russia are “standing up to an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc.”
But the similarities between past celebrations and yesterday’s ended there. This year, the parade was dramatically scaled back. The parade included four parade units, including some from North Korea, and there was no heavy military hardware. Instead, screens spread across Red Square showed pre-recorded videos of drones, air defense forces, and submarines that state media claimed were from the front lines.
Although foreign leaders have attended the event in the past, this year there were few. As Matthew Luxmoore noted in the Wall Street Journal, Russian allies Venezuela and Hungary have recently lost their pro-Russian leaders, and Russian ally Iran is at war with the U.S. China’s leader Xi Jinping attended last year but did not attend this year. Russian officials allowed few foreign reporters to cover the event and warned people there could be restrictions on texting and the internet “to ensure security during the festive events.”
Putin’s scaled-back celebration reflects fear of Ukrainian drone strikes, which are hitting deep inside Russia. It also reflects growing discontent over the war and its devastation of the economy, and anger at the increasing repression with which Putin is trying to control opposition.
As former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul noted in McFaul’s World, Putin’s war on Ukraine has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union’s war with Nazi Germany and has achieved none of the goals Putin set out for the conflict. He has not subjugated Ukraine and has not succeeded in regime change. He has not “demilitarized” Ukraine; indeed, Ukraine is more militarized than ever before and has become an important player in global weapons systems. And not only has Putin failed to stop NATO from expanding, but in response to his invasion of Ukraine, both Finland and Sweden have joined the defensive alliance.
Instead of achieving Putin’s goals, the war has killed or wounded more than 1.2 million Russian soldiers and eaten up the economy. As criticism of the regime has become more outspoken, the Kremlin has curbed access to the internet, not only exacerbating that criticism but also, as McFaul notes, making it harder for people to use mobile banking, order a taxi, or use other online services. Rumors are circulating that Putin is increasingly concerned for his own safety. Rather than walking to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to lay flowers as usual, yesterday he took an armored bus.
Russia had announced a ceasefire for Friday and Saturday, but when it unraveled, President Donald J. Trump announced that he had persuaded Russia and Ukraine to agree to a three-day ceasefire that would cover the Victory Day celebration and allow an exchange of 1,000 prisoners from each country. After the announcement of the ceasefire, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky trolled Putin with a formal presidential decree to “allow” a parade in Moscow. It said: “For the time of the parade…the territorial square of Red Square shall be excluded from the plan of application of Ukrainian weapons.”
By Sunday—after the parade—the ceasefire had already broken down.
Today McFaul noted: “Ukrainian warriors have stopped the invading Russian hordes. Putin is losing his war in Ukraine…. Putin would be wise to cut his losses.”
In Hungary, a different kind of celebration was underway as Péter Magyar took the oath of office as prime minister after winning a landslide victory over Putin ally Viktor Orbán.
In his 16 years of rule, Orbán rejected the liberal democracy his country used to enjoy, saying that its emphasis on multiculturalism weakened the national culture while its insistence on human equality undermined traditional society by recognizing that women and LGBTQ people have the same rights as straight white men. The age of liberal democracy was over, he said, and a new age had begun.
In place of equality, Orbán advocated what he called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” “Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal,” he said in July 2018; “it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues—say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favor of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to Christian culture; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept.”
Orbán focused on LBGTQ rights as a danger to “Western civilization.” Arguing the need to protect children, his party has made it impossible for transgender people to change their gender identification on legal documents and made it illegal to share with minors any content that can be interpreted as promoting an LBGTQ lifestyle. After Orbán put allies in charge of Hungarian universities, his government banned public funding for gender studies courses. According to his chief of staff: “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women.”
The American right wing championed Orbán, who called for the establishment of a global right wing to continue to work together to destroy liberal democracy and establish Christian democracy. Before Hungary’s April election, Trump not only repeatedly endorsed Orbán but also promised “to use the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s Economy, as we have done for our Great Allies in the past, if Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian people ever need it.” Vice President J.D. Vance actually traveled to Hungary to campaign for Orbán.
But the Hungarian people overwhelmingly rejected Orbán and his party, giving Magyar’s party more than a two-thirds majority in parliament. This will give it the power to overturn not only the laws Orbán and his party passed, but also the changes Orbán made to entrench himself and his party in power permanently. Magyar promised to root out the corruption that has made Orbán and his cronies rich, to restore the rule of law and freedom of speech, and to repair Hungary’s ties with the European Union, which Orbán had frayed almost to the breaking point with his loyalty to Vladimir Putin.
In his inauguration speech, Magyar vowed to “serve my country, not rule over it.” He noted that the corrupt members of the outgoing government “stole from the pockets of Hungarians” and left behind a huge budget deficit and a broken healthcare system. He vowed accountability for those who plundered the country and broke its laws, and promised to rebuild the nation’s shattered checks and balances. He urged Hungarians always to criticize their leaders and hold them accountable.
“We inherited a country where politics deliberately pitted Hungarians against each other,” he said, and he explained how Orbán mobilized supporters with hatred and fear, poisoning “the collective psyche of an entire nation.” “The Hungarian state must never again do this to its own citizens,” he said. He vowed to heal the country: “We will once again learn to think of ourselves as one nation,” he promised.
Then Magyar and members of his party walked out to the crowd outside the parliament on Lajos Kossuth Lajos Square. Magyar urged them to see themselves as one community. He assured them that the story of the day had not been written by politicians in backrooms, but by them. “[I]t was all of you. You wrote it, through your work, your hope, your concern, and your determination. This is now your transition to democracy, this is your homeland, your National Assembly, and we thank you!”
After Magyar spoke, as Roma singer Ibolya Oláh, a lesbian, began performing her anthem “Magyarország,” the crowd crossed the reflecting pool in front of the parliament building to surge forward, taking back their public spaces and their parliament, illustrating their faith in a new era for their country.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
