Behind the shining pomp of the Red Square rally is a Russia in turmoil

There were busloads of tough men from a factory near Moscow alighting by the statue of Karl Marx to celebrate, university teachers passing out invitations to a pop concert to their students, workers lugging armfuls of Russian flags to distribute. Some of the tricolours bore the image of Putin.

This is the Russia that Putin envisions after 22 years in power: united, simple, cynical and slavish. But real life is not a staged rally. And as Putin gathered his lackeys and satraps in the gilded Grand Kremlin Palace, across the country, from the minority ethnic republics of Dagestan and Buryatia to the hinterlands of Pskov and Penza, to cosmopolitan Moscow, communities are in turmoil.

Hundreds of thousands of men are leaving their homes, some contracted and mobilised into fighting in Ukraine, and still more fleeing for the borders to dodge the draft. In both cases, they do not know when they will come home.

It was a very different scene to the one eight years ago, when Russia annexed Crimea and Putin rode a wave of political euphoria that buoyed his support and fractured his critics. The opposition never recovered.

In Red Square, the concert began. The pop diva Alla Pugacheva, a Russian icon for decades, had fled the country with her children days ago. Instead, there were Oleg Gazmanov and Grigory Leps, loyal artists for the pro-Kremlin masses.

Hours before the signing, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he needed to confirm the borders of the territories that Russia was claiming to annex on Friday.