Washington, May 3 (Agency) Russian President Vladimir Putin could formally declare war on Ukraine on May 9, which is known as ‘Victory Day’, according to the US and Western officials. Russia celebrates May 9 commemorating the country’s defeat of the Nazis in 1945. According to CNN, the Western officials have long believed that Putin would leverage the symbolic significance and propaganda value of that day to announce either a military achievement in Ukraine, a major escalation of hostilities — or both. Last week, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said, “I think he will try to move from his ‘special operation. He’s been rolling the pitch, laying the ground for being able to say ‘look, this is now a war against Nazis, and what I need is more people. I need more Russian cannon fodder’.”
The formal declaration of war on May 9 would legally allow Putin to mobilize reserve forces and draft conscripts. He further said that he “would not be surprised, and I don’t have any information about this, that he is probably going to declare on this May Day that ‘we are now at war with the world’s Nazis and we need to mass mobilize the Russian people’.” On Monday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said that there is “good reason to believe that the Russians will do everything they can to use” May 9 for propaganda purposes. “We’ve seen the Russians really double down on their propaganda efforts, probably, almost certainly, as a means to distract from their tactical and strategic failures on the battlefield in Ukraine.”
He said, “I’m quite confident that we’ll be hearing more from Moscow in the lead-up to May 9. I’m quite confident that you will be hearing more from the United States, from our partners, including our NATO partners, in the lead-up to May 9 as well.” Meanwhle, Michael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said that Russia would hold sham referendums in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics to attach the entities to Russia, while the captured city of Kherson would be declared an independent republic, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.