- Russia's Victory Day celebrations were scaled back this year.
- There was no air force display and just one decades-old tank rolled through Moscow's Red Square.
Just one tank rolled through Moscow's Red Square for Russia's Victory Day parade, an annual event Russia typically uses to show off its military might.
Before Tuesday's celebrations kicked off, Russia had already cancelled or scaled back its typical celebrations across the country, which mark Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
Experts said that Russia was trying to conceal how its military had been degraded by its invasion of Ukraine.
Tuesday's military parade in Moscow did not include an air display or any military jets over the capital city.
It was also missing any modern advanced tanks, the BBC and the New York Times reported.
In fact, multiple reports said that just one tank — a T-34, which Russia first used in World War II — was in the parade. The Times, The Telegraph, and Reuters reported the single tank.
The Associated Press noted fewer pieces of military equipment compared to previous years, and that "for the first time in years, the parade ended in under an hour."
The Moscow parade had 8,000 soldiers compared to 11,000 last year, according to the BBC.
In previous years, Russia showed off brand new tank models and remote-controlled tanks and flew dozens of fighter jets over the city during the event.
Russia also cancelled its Moscow Victory Day aerial display last year, the first event since it launched its invasion of Ukraine. It blamed bad weather, despite sunny forecasts.
Russian officials either did not give reasons for the scaled-down events this year, or else said there was a threat of Ukrainian attacks.
But experts at the Washington DC-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said last week that Russia was trying to "conceal the degradation of the Russian military."
Russia has lost a huge amount of equipment since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Open source intelligence platform Oryx estimated that Russia is losing around 150 tanks a month in Ukraine. Russia has also been recorded taking decades-old tanks out of storage.
The International Institute of Strategic Studies estimated in February that Russia had lost at least 40% of its prewar fleet of tanks.
Russia needs a lot of its equipment in Ukraine that it would usually show off in the parades, the ISW noted.
The ISW also said that Russian officials likely worried that "celebrations honoring deceased service members could become a potential source of domestic backlash for Russia's high casualty figures in Ukraine."
The UK Ministry of Defence gave a similar assessment last month, saying that "honouring the fallen of previous generations could easily blur into exposing the scope of the recent losses, which the Kremlin attempts to cover up."