Eurasia Daily Monitor, 17 Jan 08: Moscow Resumes May Parades to Demonstrate Military Strength
Full-scale, Soviet-style military parades – with displays of tanks and other military hardware – will return to Red Square beginning May 9. The decision to resume this public display of military might was reportedly taken at a January 12 meeting of top Russian military leaders. The new Topol-M (SS-27) mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles will also roll past the reviewing stands near the Kremlin wall. The parade is timed to celebrate VE-Day, the end of the European portion of World War II.

The planned high-profile parade will apparently coincide with the inauguration of the next Russian president, presumably Dmitry Medvedev, whom Vladimir Putin has designated as his successor. Medvedev’s election on March 2 is a near certainty, since elections are a mere formality in the framework of Russia's imitation democracy, and the new president must be inaugurated during the first half of May. A public display of Russian armor and nuclear might is clearly a grand way to welcome Medvedev and to commend Putin, who has agreed to serve alongside Medvedev as prime minister. Its easy to imagine them both – Putin and Medvedev – standing side-by-side atop the reviewing stand in front of Vladimir Lenin's tomb, as the tanks and ICBMs roll by and jet fighters scream overhead – symbolizing the restoration of mighty Russia.....