Many Russians are not keen on celebrating the Kremlin’s Biggest Day of the Year

Red, white and blue flags of Russia flutter in the air along the wide streets of Moscow. Parks and tourist areas are full of newly planted flowers. Ribbons of St. George with orange and black stripes, symbols of Russian military valor, are displayed in almost every shop window.

Since Soviet times, the “May Holidays” – the period from May 1, International Labor Day, to May 9, when Russia celebrates the Soviet role in defeating the Nazis in World War II – heralded the arrival of spring.

But this year, the mood is not quite the same as the festivities.

Prices and taxes are rising as the economy struggles to cover the costs of the war in Ukraine. A new wave of repressive wartime measures has led to unprecedented internet restrictions, including another round of blackouts this week in Moscow and St. End-of-war talks have stalled even as surveys show record numbers of war-weary Russians are calling for peace.

In this season of parades, the war is brought home to Moscow, the capital. The parks there are decorated not only with flowers, but also with metal detectors. The May 9 parade in Red Square – one of the biggest events of the year, played in the heart of the Kremlin’s power – is being cut short due to the possibility of Ukrainian strikes. That risk was highlighted on Monday, when a plane crashed into a high-rise in Moscow. On Friday night, Ukraine launched 26 drones towards Moscow, said the city’s Mayor, Sergey S. Sobyanin. They were all shot down, he added. His assertion could not be independently verified.

In a show of unusual weakness, the Russian government unsuccessfully appealed to Ukraine for a ceasefire on the day of the parade and agreed to “additional security measures” to protect President Vladimir V. Putin. The Kremlin has banned almost all journalists from the event, citing “terrorist threats from Kyiv.”

Far from the capital, Ukraine has repeatedly struck Russian oil facilities, including Perm, 930 kilometers from the border, and the Black Sea city of Tuapse, where the strike caused an environmental disaster. Early on Friday, Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery in Yarovslavl, about 150 miles northeast of Moscow, in a sign of Ukraine’s military buildup.

A woman named Svetlana, who lives in Tuapse, described growing fatigue from the war in Ukraine, which has lasted more than four years, longer than the Soviet participation in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

He said the citizens are starting to realize that the war is leading to “chaos and negative consequences for the people.” Svetlana, who asked that her last name be withheld to avoid possible repercussions, described a “stupid vicious circle” where taxes go up, more money is used to block the internet and people find it difficult to do tax-paying work.

The holiday of May 9, Victory Day, is very important in the Russian calendar. The Kremlin made the Soviet victory in World War II a public religion for the Russian people. An estimated 27 million Soviet people – soldiers and civilians – died in the war, the highest death toll of any participating country. The heroic victory that brought about the status of the Soviet Union as a world power is a unifying force for Russia.

It is also a marked contrast to the current landscape of Ukraine.

Russia has gained little ground over the years there despite heavy casualties. At least 213,000 Russian soldiers have died, according to independent newspaper Mediazona, which compiles public death toll reports. Western researchers have estimated the actual number at more than 300,000.

The Kremlin has created the illusion of a distant war to remove it from the minds of the Russian people. But as the war depresses the economy and is used as an excuse for internet restrictions, the Western ambassador in Moscow told me he has seen a change in Russian willingness to tolerate it all.

“There is a collective concern,” said the ambassador, because “no one can see how this ends.” Mthnywya spoke and asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on this matter.

According to the Levada Center, an independent pollster, 47 percent of Russians expressed concern in April about their lives, up 11 percent from last year.

Dissatisfaction with the economy and internet restrictions is reflected in Mr. Putin, who has been in decline for weeks and is now at his lowest level since the start of the war. But aside from complaining to the electorate, Russians have few ways to air their displeasure, as the Kremlin continues to view any public criticism as a threat to the regime.

Authorities blocked attempts to hold protests in several cities due to internet outages and popular apps such as Telegram being pulled. May Day rallies usually organized by the Communist Party were banned in many regions. Even a meeting to protest the delay in the construction of school buildings in a village in western Russia was closed.

As the economy falters, burdened by excessive military spending, high interest rates and Western sanctions, even establishment-aligned Russians are sounding the alarm.

“I sincerely believe we are in trouble,” said Robert Nigmatulin, an economist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, at an economic forum in Moscow last month.

He said the standard of living in the Soviet Union was lower than that of Europe. “Nevertheless, we were building the country; we were building space, nuclear power; we were at the forefront and, of course, we sacrificed this,” said Mr. Nigmatulin. “Now we have lost everything and we are still very poor. Even in the poorest regions of China, the income is higher than our poorest regions.”

He tackled Russia’s bleak indicators: consumer prices have risen 77 percent since 2015, high taxes are putting a lot of pressure on small and medium-sized businesses, and a low birth rate that presents serious statistical challenges. Some respected economists poured cold water on his dire predictions, but, nevertheless, many ordinary people felt this.

Irina, who works in business and asked that her last name be withheld, said she had “a feeling of a coming storm.”

“I see that the economy as a whole is being restructured and it is getting harder,” he said. His clients had been laying off workers, he added, and inflation had eroded the pay raises he had received.

Greater uncertainty in Russia is compounded by shrinking space for free speech, as Russians navigate the shifting lines of what is permitted.

The attack on Eksmo-AST, one of Russia’s largest publishers, shows a deep chill. The police recently detained their top management for several days, apparently because of a book with LGBTQ content, which is not allowed. The book was published by a subsidiary of Eksmo which was closed in January.

The company was targeted even after it tried to put the Kremlin under pressure by publishing patriotic, pro-war literature. The current state of publishing in Russia, the owner of Eksmo, Oleg Novikov, told the local news site RBK, is a “bomb zone,” given the “unclear process” of what is not allowed.

When news of the Eksmo raid broke, I was having lunch with Aleksei A. Venediktov, who ran the capital’s last independent radio station, Echo of Moscow, until it was forced to close after the war started in 2022.

Mr. Venediktov was once a friend of Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, and Margarita Simonyan, editor of the state news agency RT. Now, Mr. Venediktov is facing an administrative charge of “participating in undesirable organizational activities.”

Details of the case were not available from him or his lawyer. The Russian Ministry of Justice has a list of organizations that have been deemed “undesirable” and banned from operating in Russia. Mr. Venediktov released the list, which has more than 350 organizations, including the independent newspaper Meduza, the environmental group Greenpeace, Yale University and the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

“I have never cooperated with one of these groups,” he said.

Not all Russians are happy with the state of affairs. Some view Russia favorably by focusing on other countries’ failures.

Konstantin V. Malofeev, a mainstream media expert, told me that the United States “made a big mistake” by going to war with Iran and was exposed as a “paper tiger.”

In an interview he had in his office on the middle of the Garden Ring in Moscow, he talked about the influence that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had on President Trump’s decision to attack Iran. He asked if Mr. Trump is the one in charge, and said that the recognition of the American president is what made Washington end the war.

“If we see that he is in charge, there is little chance that he will work as a negotiator, some kind of mediator or mediator between us and Ukraine,” he said of Mr. In addition to the failure of communications, the increase in the production of the battlefield, Mr. Malofeev, it means that the war may last a long time.

At a May 1 meeting in Moscow in the image of Karl Marx organized by the Communist Party, I spoke to two men who said that Russia was “more free and fair” than America or Europe.

“The Internet is not limited to Russia,” said one of the men, Andrei Pavlovsky, 50, who works in international finance. “China, the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain also filter Internet traffic. No one talks about this, but any situation in Russia immediately excites the whole world for some reason.”

But, I asked, how does the takeover of free internet sound?

“Freedom is not chaos,” said Mr. Pavlovsky. “Freedom is control.”

Alina Lobzina again Andrew E. Kramer reporting contributed.