With Chinese President Xi Jinping at his side, Russia's Vladimir Putin held grand celebrations for the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender. Xi, the guest of honor, as well as about 20 other foreign leaders, joined Putin on Friday, May 9, for the festivities, which were touted as featuring the largest military parade on Moscow's Red Square since the 1945 victory. Among the troops who marched before the presidential platform were 1,500 "heroes" of the Kremlin's "special military operation" in Ukraine. Unlike the approximately 10,000 other soldiers who marched in unison alongside them, they had not donned parade atire, but kept their khaki combat uniforms.
"The entire country, the society, the people support the participants of the 'special military operation,'" declared Putin at the start of the parade, praising the "courage" of soldiers and volunteers who had gone to the front lines. After honoring the veterans of the "Great Patriotic War," and, incidentally, also mentioning the "second front" in the West (without noting that Western Europe had gone to war against Hitler as early as 1939, two years before the USSR did), he paid tribute to the "courageous Chinese people and [to] all those who fought for a peaceful future."
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