The Moscow parade pictures that show how far Russia has fallen in 15 years ...Middle East

Russia has marked Victory Day with a meticulously choreographed military parade in Moscow’s Red Square.

The parade marking the end of the Second World War was attended by veterans and over 20 global leaders including China’s Xi Jinping, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as well as leaders from the former Soviet Union, Africa and Asia.

Yet this year’s celebrations were strikingly different from previous years when the militaries of Western nations paraded through the square.

Nato troops march through Moscow in 2010

An event that once drew together leaders and troops from across Europe, including Nato countries – most notably during the 2010 parade when American, British, French, Polish, and even Ukrainian and Moldovan soldiers, marched through Red Square – this year’s gathering reflected Russia’s deepening rift with the West.

Absent this year were Western dignitaries and military representatives, who once viewed the parade as an opportunity to commemorate the shared sacrifice of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

Video of the 2010 parade captures jarring footage of Ukrainian troops marching through Red Square in a parade alongside soldiers from other nations including Russia, Belarus, Britain and the US.

The 2010 parade to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis was attended by Western leaders including Angela Merkel, then the German chancellor, Estonia’s President as well as Poland’s acting president.

In their place are representatives from countries that have maintained or even strengthened ties with Russia despite Western-led sanctions. The parade has become not only a display of military might but a political stage, shaped to showcase Russia’s alternative diplomatic network and to underscore its narrative of resistance against what it portrays as Western domination and historical revisionism.

With the attendance of Xi, Vladimir Putin’s “guest of honour”, and delegations from countries across the the Global South, the Kremlin is trying to project a carefully curated message that Russia is far from isolated and continues to command international partnerships, particularly outside the Western bloc.

This year the only European leaders present were Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Slovakia’s Robert Fico.

Troops from Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Egypt, Laos, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Myanmar, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam marched in the Red Square today.

North Korea was represented by its ambassador to Russia rather than leader Kim Jong Un. North Korean troops, who have been fighting alongside Russian troops against Ukraine, did not march in the parade, but some North Korean soldiers in uniform were spotted watching the parade in Moscow.

The day has acquired additional significance for Moscow since Putin launched his invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, under the false pretext that the war was a “denazification” campaign — a claim Kyiv and Western nations vehemently reject.

“Despite the hostile attitude towards Russia from a number of Western countries, we are very successfully holding a very large-scale event,” said the Kremlin’s top foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov.

Robert Tollast, researcher at the London-based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute, said that although the Soviet Union’s contribution to achieving allied victory against Nazi Germany was significant, “they want to frame it as something that doesn’t really belong to the United States or France or Britain”.

They want to show that “the victory is theirs, specifically Russia’s”, he said. “That sidelines Ukraine’s huge contribution to the defeat of the Nazis.”

“It’s a very brazen act to be there”, he added, and the leaders who decide to attend would imply “essentially a new bloc and a new polarisation in the world”.

Russia invited European countries to take part in the Victory Day festivities but the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, warned EU leaders not to participate in the events in Moscow.

Troops march towards the Red Square for a Victory Day military parade rehearsal in 2025 (Photo: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu/Getty Images)

Ukraine, meanwhile, has invited senior EU leaders and officials to Kyiv today to challenge the celebrations in Russia. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, and 17 other foreign ministers, are visiting the Ukrainian city of Lviv today.

“It’s only Europe and North America that are isolating themselves from Russia, rather than the other way around. But even that’s broken if Robert Fico and Alexander Vucic from Serbia appear in Moscow”, said Hall.

What Moscow is trying to portray is that Russia, like China, is a leader of the Global South, and that Russia “is standing up to Western neocolonialism”, he said.

“The key thing for Putin is to highlight that he’s not isolated, that Russia isn’t isolated, that heads of government and foreign countries are still coming to Moscow, that this is still a big draw”.

And that ultimately, as Russian media claimed at the start of the war in Ukraine, Western countries “aren’t able to cancel Russia”.

Russia and China ‘side by side’ 

The policies of the new US administration may have contributed to the sense of emboldening felt by some authoritarian alliances, Tollast said.

“Certainly on the Russian side and I think perhaps the Chinese too feel emboldened now because relations with the US are so awful. It’s almost like they’ve got nothing to lose and they feel very confident about their plans.”

Seeing Russia and China “side by side … doesn’t chime very well with the messaging of Donald Trump that China is a major strategic competitor to the US and the overall message of his administration that it is a country that should be challenged militarily”, he said. “It’s not a very good look for Trump.”

“There is this increasingly solidifying authoritarian alliance, and it’s just very interesting to watch countries that are in the orbit of that China, North Korea, Russia friendship,” Tollast said.

Countries like Vietnam, for example, which have maintained good ties with both Russia and the US, might be “drifting closer” to the side of that global alliance, Tollast said.

“Russia can’t be defeated — I suspect that will be his message to the Americans,” said Stephen Hall, lecturer in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the University of Bath.

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The message will also convey “that the Russian-Chinese relationship remains as strong as ever, that the Russian military is as strong as ever, and that supporting Ukraine is not going to lead to a winnable war”, Hall said.

Putin may however, “try and say some nice things about Donald Trump as well, that it was the Soviet Union or Russia and America that won the Second World War, and that these two countries should sit down as great powers and sort out the world’s crises, and little powers like Ukraine and other countries, Germany, Britain, just need to accept it”.

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