Vladimir Putin’s annual military band festival has been canceled for only the second time ever, as the Russian president’s public humiliation spirals.
Organizers of the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival, which was due to start on Aug. 21 and run for nine days, released a mysterious statement on Monday, citing “reasons beyond the organizers’ control.”
The festival, which features performances on Red Square by military bands from across the world, has been held since 2007 with official backing from the Russian government. It has only been canceled once before, during the COVID pandemic.
And while the short statement from the organizers doesn’t say why it has been “postponed,” Russians can probably guess by looking to the sky. Ukraine has intensified strikes inside Russia lately, with over 600 drones launched at Moscow on Sunday.
Moscow regional governor Andrey Vorobyov described the assault as ‘one of the most massive drone attacks in recent memory.”
In total, 822 drones were sent. At least seven people were killed, five in Russia’s south-western region of Rostov, one in Belgorod, along the southern border with Ukraine, and one elderly man in Moscow.
The attacks come amid a humiliating spate of cancellations that has eroded Putin’s projection of calm. In June, the annual Russia Day concert on Moscow’s Red Square was canceled for the first time since the celebrations began in 2003.
The concert, titled “The Strength of Russia Lies in the Unity of Its People,” was significantly pared back with no explanation. In May, Victory Day celebrations were shelved, with a “terrorist threat” blamed.
In July, Russia’s typically grand Navy Day parade was replaced with another pared-back event. After canceling the parade—which was set to feature around 200 warships sailing along the Neva River in St. Petersburg—the president opted for a televised meeting with Navy personnel.
The flurry of cancellations had clearly gotten to him as he began ranting about Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The 73-year-old Kremlin chief angrily predicted that Ukraine would ultimately fall apart, claiming that Russia had actually been the only “guarantor” of Ukraine’s “territorial integrity.”
Apart from the eastern regions of Ukraine that Moscow has tried to claim as its own, Putin declared the western regions “a gift from Stalin” and claimed they would “sooner or later” return to Hungary, Romania, and Poland.
Russia has also scrapped this year’s edition of its flagship combat drone convention, Dronnitsa, which was booked for Aug. 29-30 in the northwestern city of Veliky Novgorod.
The cancellations come amid an escalating Ukrainian counter-offensive. A months-long Ukrainian drone campaign has targeted Russian oil infrastructure and crippled parts of the country’s refining capacity, worsening fuel shortages and stoking frustration among some of the Kremlin’s most loyal supporters.
Kyiv has gone after big businesses. Ukrainian drones have hit roughly a dozen Wildberries sites, the Russian analog to e-commerce giant Amazon.
Indeed, Sunday’s strike hit one of the company’s warehouses 15.5 miles from the center of Moscow. Three people were injured.
