Russian Z-Channels on the Eve of the Victory Cult in Moscow 2026

May 6, 2026May 7, 2026

As the May 9 “Victory Mania”¹ celebrations approach, signs of panic keep leaking out of the Kremlin. The closer the Victory Cult in Moscow 2026 gets, the more palace drama surfaces — and the clearer the dictator’s state of mind becomes. According to several reports, Pootin’s PR team strongly urged him to visit Tuapse right after the port fire burned itself out. The whole point was obvious. Show up, look concerned, and show the tsar “cares” about his people.

Western leaders do this routinely — disaster sites, tornado zones, flood areas. Cynical as it sounds, showing up in the rubble and performing empathy reliably boosts approval ratings. Political consultants treat these moments as a kind of popularity doping, and almost none get skipped.

Pootin’s team tried to apply the same playbook. But the bald grandfather is such a coward that he refuses to appear anywhere with even a marginal risk to his body. After the first strike on Tuapse the trip was still being considered. After the second strike, the Führer’s trousers reportedly acquired a distinctive brown color with an unpleasant smell. His personal security detail reinforced the point: PR is secondary, survival is primary.

Bloomberg Says What Russian Media Won’t

As usual, enemy media handles dangerous topics by outsourcing them to foreign sources. The result is a comedic situation where Russian outlets explain what is happening inside Russia by quoting Western publications. Right now they are citing Bloomberg — and here is what they are writing:

The expanded range of Ukrainian drones, which regularly strike cities from the Leningrad Oblast to the Urals, means that a quarter of Russia’s territory and 70% of its population now fall within their reach… Since the start of April, the AFU has struck Chelyabinsk — a city of 1.2 million people located 1,500–1,700 km from the Ukrainian border — at least five times. The regional capital, known since Soviet times as ‘Tankograd’ for its concentration of military factories, has become a regular drone target. On May 1, a military airfield near the city was struck, with Ukraine’s HUR² reporting the destruction of several Su-57 and Su-34 fighter jets.

Ekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, located 1,700 km from Ukraine, was reached by drones five times in April–May and seven times since the start of the year. Perm, 1,500 km from the border, has been struck 15 times this year — seven of those since early April. On April 30, Transneft storage tanks and the Permnefteorgsintez refinery were hit, after which the sky filled with smog and ‘oil rain’ fell over the city. On Tuesday, Cheboksary was also struck.

Z-Bloggers Are Not Feeling It

Enemy Z-bloggers are increasingly voicing the grim mood that has become a trend inside Russia. Dark premonitions produce dark thoughts — and occasionally some unintentionally funny content.

The FSB’s own mouthpiece, the Telegram channel “Kontorskaya Tabakерka”, describes roughly the same atmosphere:

Interesting information has reached us. It turns out Mikhail Mishustin was planning to fly out of Moscow for Victory Day. Officially to attend celebrations in Ekaterinburg, but sources say the Prime Minister has been extremely emotionally unstable lately — something that has surprised many people in his inner circle.

So the dude found a perfectly respectable excuse to put as much distance between himself and the tsar as possible on that particular day. Which means he has already mentally written off the Führer — and believes something bad is about to happen to him. Better to be in Magadan or Anadyr than to share his fate.

No Rehearsal, No Parade?

A few days ago, a post appeared in one of the enemy’s public channels. An Orc³ was lamenting that every year before May 9 he used to watch military hardware rolling past his window toward Red Square during the night rehearsals — and this year there was nothing. No rehearsal, he concluded, means no parade. His followers responded with sympathetic encouragement: hold on, everything will sort itself out. Worth noting that by historical standards, the transformation of “Kyiv in three days” into “just hold on” happened remarkably fast.

As it turned out, the dear Muscovites didn’t miss their rehearsal before the Victory Cult in Moscow 2026. Ukrainian Defense Forces drones ran that rehearsal — and anyone who watched the footage could see exactly what it looked like. Across different parts of Moscow, Orcs reported drones flying extremely low. We know that sound very well. AFU launched only a limited number of drones but now the Muscovites also know that sound. Ukrainian defenders used them to probe the much-praised air defense system packed into Moscow with extreme density.

The enemy capital already had the heaviest air defenses in the country — second only to Pootin’s Valdai residence. But ahead of the celebrating Victory Cult in Moscow 2026, they pulled in even more systems from across the country and packed them into the city. The Orcs pushed that air defense to the limit, cramming a single location with everything they had. So it was quite informative to see how it actually performs under pressure. Muscovites heard not just drone engines. They also heard rocket launches, explosions, and more — the kind of sounds they could easily pass off as “fireworks rehearsal”.

The Bald Dictator’s Personal Shield

Moscow mayor Sobyanin duly announced that air defenses had shot down Ukrainian drones. Perhaps he had not seen the footage circulating online showing a drone hitting the Mosfilmovsky complex — just five kilometers from Red Square.

Notably, Moscow plans to cut mobile internet from May 5 through May 9. In other cities — St. Petersburg among them — mobile internet has already been shut off with no announcement of when it will return. So the volume of video evidence from the Orc side may drop after May 6. What matters is that we already got the footage we needed — including the air defense video where an Orc asks the rhetorical question: “Where did all those extra AA systems come from?”

Complaining about the fact that air defenses were stripped from the rest of the country and hauled to Moscow is pointless and dangerous — that kind of talk leads to prison, and from prison to a storm trooper position near Kupyansk or Pokrovsk. Everyone understands why the systems were moved: to protect the bald dictator who will be standing in a specific place at a known time. The military has a word for that: target designation. Last year Xi Jinping standing next to Pootin served as the guarantee of the Führer’s scalp integrity. This year that protection is absent — hence the emergency measures to cover the Kremlin Führer’s fuselage. Even at the cost of the Kirishi refinery, which was also struck. That would be the same refinery personally owned by Pootin’s family — the one that generates money exclusively for the Führer’s personal needs.

Madyar Confirms. In His Own Way.

Commander of the Drone Forces Robert “Madyar” Brovdi confirmed the strikes on the Kirishi refinery and the military plant in Cheboksary — in his signature sarcastic style:

What a wide-open backyard this turned out to be: while you’re busy covering your snout with your hands, remember, you antlered dictator — your balls stay just as exposed as they were last night. 🔥🔥 From the Baltic (Kirishi oil, version 5.0) all the way to Cheboksary in Chuvashia.

The AA elements dragged to the Kremlin from across “All-Russia” paint a pathetic picture of a frightened ostrich: snout buried in armor, the vast bare ass on full display — parade pomp versus the pragmatic disposal of strategic energy and defense industry assets.

So we now have the answer to “where did Moscow’s extra air defenses come from” — and our military is essentially saying: you rehearse, we rehearse too. The enemy is gradually beginning to feel something resembling what we felt in 2022, when we had to ration ammunition across every weapons system because stocks were visibly shrinking and resupply was uncertain. That same realization is now creeping into the enemy’s mind — at least when it comes to air defense. And the Victory Cult in Moscow 2026, without even starting, has already fulfilled a very important mission. The Orcs pulled scarce air defense systems away from their strategic facilities.

¹ Victory Mania (Russian: Победобесие / Pobedobesiye) – Ukrainian and Russian opposition term for the increasingly hysterical cult around Russia’s WWII victory, used as a tool of state propaganda and political mobilization.

² HUR (Ukrainian: ГУР, Головне Управління Розвідки, Holovne Upravlinnya Rozvidky) – the military intelligence agency of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

³ Orcs – a common term for Russians who support or participate in the armed aggression against Ukraine. Dehumanizing? Yes. Accurate? Also yes.