On Navy Day, Putin once again delivered a set of messages from the well-known anti-Ukrainian narrative, reflecting the deep crisis of the Kremlin’s reasoning regarding the aggressive war against Ukraine.
The annual naval parade on July 26, 2026, instead of showcasing strength, turned into a platform for repeating tired theses used by Moscow to justify the prolonged Putin war.
The speech to the servicemen illustrated an attempt to shift responsibility for initiating hostilities onto Kyiv and its Western partners. The claim that Moscow did not start the war but is merely responding to external threats completely ignores the events of 2014 and the full-scale invasion of 2022.
Similarly, statements about Russia’s role as the sole guarantor of Ukrainian territorial integrity contradict the fact of the annexation of Crimea and parts of 4 Ukrainian regions, where the Russian leadership itself trampled the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
The situation remains particularly tense in the waters of the Black and Azov Seas, where the Russian side has committed illegal actions since the first day of escalation. Systematic blockades of civilian shipping, mining of international maritime routes, and cruise missile strikes from ships on peaceful cities have turned the region into a zone of constant risk.
At the same time, the regular loss of Russian Navy warships under Ukrainian drone strikes demonstrated the fleet’s vulnerability, forcing it to leave bases in Crimea and cede initiative at sea.
Attempts by the leadership to redirect public attention to the feats of “special military operation” participants indicate an effort to form a new ideological basis for future generations. The suggestion that the conflict will end sooner or later sounds like an attempt to reassure a population suffering from the economic consequences of Putin’s war.
Colossal resources directed from the budget to continue hostilities are being extracted from the social sphere, and the justification for such expenditures remains extremely vague for citizens.
Statements about the complete failure of attempts to isolate the country in the security sphere also clash with the reality where Russia is under the sanction pressure of 10,000 restrictions and has lost access to modern technologies.
The passage about Arctic superiority and possessing the only nuclear icebreaker fleet in the world looks like an attempt to shift focus from heavy losses in the southern theater of military operations to the Arctic topic. References to international law in the Arctic region seem selective, as in the Black Sea, international law norms are violated daily.
This rhetoric shows the lack of new meaningful guidelines among the country’s leadership, which is forced to operate with constructions from a decade ago. Years of aggression have led to the destruction of the security system in Europe and the degradation of Russia’s naval potential itself, which cannot be hidden behind empty slogans and toasts.
In the image: Putin held a parade on Navy Day in the Admiralty’s courtyard with a submarine painted on the wall. Photo: video screenshot
