Behind the scenes of the Parade. 2025. Orenburg.

By fromSalekhard in My museums 14.06.2026

I traveled from Samara to Orenburg (a little over 400 km) for the parade itself on May 9, 2025. The reason was a video from last year’s parade, which showed the military equipment included the 9K35 Strela air defense missile system based on the MT-LB and the 2S7M Malka self-propelled gun.

Since it was already the parade itself, I didn’t expect a seat on the podium. Plus, I didn’t have any spy friends in this city, so I had to do some reconnaissance myself beforehand.

The square here is smaller.

From the video, it’s clear the vehicles are coming out of there and heading here. Let’s go look for tracks.

I’m certainly no seasoned Siberian hunter, but the tracks I’m looking at aren’t hare tracks, but tank tracks—they’re visible in the city even without snow.

Ah, here they are. So the “rookery” is here. And since it’s not here by evening, they’ll bring it early in the morning.

And so it turned out. The simpler and easier ones arrived first.

And there turned out to be quite a few of them.

Moreover, the dimensions of those arriving kept increasing,

until they reached prohibitive proportions!

Parking such a colossus without parking sensors and cameras is a masterstroke.

After some time, based on my experience in Omsk and Ufa, I found myself an observation post on a small hill and was able to survey the entire area.

And just in time! Because that’s where the self-propelled army monsters ended, and we moved on to transportable ones.

The size and weight of the equipment being delivered continued to increase.

I must say that without knowing the scenario, it is very difficult to be in the right place at the right time. So I had to hop from place to place.

And while unloading the air defense missile system, I thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle.

Once the process was completed, I walked around and inspected all the delivered equipment.

While I was watching the unloading of modern monsters, equipment and people from the Great Patriotic War period were making their way past, practically unnoticed,

From time to time, it was they who received reinforcements.

I was left to admire it from afar, using a decent zoom on my camera, from a previously chosen and equipped place as close as possible to the place where the parade itself was taking place.