MARIUPOL IS NOT GOING TO BE ANYBODY'S STALINGRAD.

A few industrial complexes in Stalingrad somehow managed to hold out until the Soviet Army could lift the siege.

The steel complex Azovstal in Mariupol has, unsurprisingly, that Stalin era look to it.

Soviet news agency Jen Psaki Tass 1978 photo retrieved from Radio Free Europe.

The factory is the kind of facility where defenders, by holing up in it, can make life miserable for the attackers, although until recently, there were civilians hiding as well.  Should Russia achieve control of the coastal strip and other bits of Eastern Ukraine, they'll have a lot of trashed industrial capacity to rebuild, that is, if they can raise the capital to do so.

In Moscow, the Victory Day celebrations were understated.

In the end, what was notable about Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech during Victory Day ceremonies was what he did not say.

He did not declare a general mobilization for all-out war against Ukraine.

He did not declare victory in a war that is now in its 75th day.

He made no threat about Russia's nuclear arsenal, something he and other officials have done repeatedly in recent weeks.

He mentioned Nazis but not "de-Nazification," one of the Kremlin's declared goals for the war.

He did not even make a general call to rally around the flag, to gird the Russian population for great sacrifice in, or because of, the war.

In addition, the air show that is often part of this parade didn't happen.  No "Z" rune in the sky (if you look at it from a different angle, it's Napoleon's "N.")  No fly-past of the Russian version of the Looking Glass plane.  (Does the Ukrainian air force have the capability to identify and take down that plane, which has a distinctive signature on radar, and it's not that far from Charkow to Moskau?)

Taken together, the parade might have been an exercise in managing expectations.  "If you watch Putin in the videos, he seems pensive and detached. Taken as a whole, the event seemed to acknowledge that things are not going well."  That post also provides a transcript of the Tsar's speech, which at twelve minutes is still shorter than what they'd run Leonid Brezhnev or Konstantin Chernenko out to mumble through.

The Tsar himself is not standing atop Lenin's tomb to deliver that speech.  Watch the video closely, you'll see a big hoarding surrounding the tomb.

Editorial note: I swapped out a ninety minute program for the two hour program from  London's Telegraph. The substitution has better sound, without anyone talking over the parade music.  As far as I know, no Ukrainian hackers changed the content.  That was not the case on Russian state television.  "On-screen program descriptions were replaced with the hackers' text when viewed on smart TVs, [British Broadcasting Corporation] reported."