Russia despot Vladimir Putin is overseeing a huge military parade in Moscow today alongside special guest China’s Xi Jinping as Russia marks the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in World War
Russia Victory Day parade 2025 guest list
Twenty-nine leaders, including top Kremlin allies Xi, Putin’s right-hand man in Europe, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are in attendance at the Victory Day parade in Red Square.
Putin shared a warm handshake and posed for photos with Xi this morning, dispelling any illusion that efforts by US President Donald Trump to drive a wedge between the Eastern powers had succeeded.
The Russian and Chinese leaders nestled side-by-side to watch the parade in a show of unity after they issued a statement yesterday condemning Trump’s plan for an Iron Dome-like missile defence system.
They said Trump’s move to create an advanced ‘Golden Dome’ system to defend the US from all missile threats would be ‘deeply destabilising’ and would risk turning space into a ‘battlefield’.
Putin and his guests watched on as a horde of Russian soldiers goose-stepped to old marching songs and roared to their commanders before international guests and Russia’s top brass.
Russia Victory Day parade 2025
Russia’s defence minister Andrey Belousov, who arrived in Red Square atop a convertible Russian Aurus government car, addressed and inspected the troops, who responded with a chorus of ‘hurrah!’, before Putin took to the stage to deliver a rousing speech.
Putin declared that Russia will always remember and appreciate the contribution of US and European allies to victory in World War II.
But he went on to say he would never allow the ‘true victors over Nazism to be slandered’ and that Moscow would ‘fight against the atrocities of the followers of Nazism’, echoing the Kremlin’s rhetoric that Russia is trying to ‘de-Nazify’ its neighbour.
‘The whole country, society and people support the participants of the special military operation,’ Putin insisted, adding: ‘We are proud of their bravery and determination, of the fortitude that has always brought us only victory.’
The deadliest war in Europe
As it is, the so-called ‘special military operation’ is in fact the deadliest war in Europe since the conflict today’s parade is commemorating.
