The Kremlin has spent the year since annexing Crimea and unleashing war in the Donbass region in a state of militaristic fervour. The agitation and propaganda media have banged on endlessly about the superiority of Russian arms over those of the West.
After Dmitry Kiselev, head of the Russia Today state information agency, helpfully opened everyone’s eyes to the fact that Russia is the only country “capable of reducing the United States to radioactive ash,” the country’s media began earnestly discussing exactly how many Topol-M missiles would be needed to wipe out the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Spain, and how many hours it would take Russian tanks to reach Warsaw and Berlin.
It might have seemed they had gone about as far as they could go, but there was more to come, not only of hot air on the subject of Russian technological superiority but also of militaristic patriotism, as the Victory Day parade on 9 May 2015 and its associated PR campaign were to show.
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