Victory Day as contested memory

The May 9 commemoration has become a site of information warfare rather than shared history. Russia's scaled-down parade, Ukraine's counter-ceasefire, the absent tanks, the drone fears — all feed into a battle over what WWII victory means eight decades later.

This processes differently across hemispheres. In the West, it's read as Russian weakness or Ukrainian resilience. In Russia, it's internal propaganda about terrorist threats and sacred tradition. The gap: nowhere is anyone processing what it means that the 20th century's defining moral victory has become a propaganda tool on all sides. The memory itself is hollowing out.