Xi, Putin are brothers in arms for show of force on Victory Day

Russia is preparing for a Victory Day parade that will showcase a new alliance with China with Xi Jinping the main guest in a line-up of world leaders who’ve resisted pressure to shun Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping shake hands during a welcoming ceremony at the Kremlin. Picture: AFP

Russia is preparing for a Victory Day parade that will showcase a new alliance with China.

President Putin has said. President Xi will be the “main guest” at the parade tomorrow, which will highlight world leaders who have resisted western pressure to shun Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Yesterday Xi flew from Beijing for a four-day visit which both sides said would cement the growing ties between the two. They are even more reliant on each other as a result of President Trump’s volatile, America-first international policies.

Trump has seemingly backed away from trying to enforce a peace deal on Ukraine favourable to Putin’s demands. He is also putting pressure on China over trade, despite agreeing to allow Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, to meet the vice-premier, He Lifeng, for initial talks about tariffs at the weekend.

Confirming Xi’s long-rumoured visit to Moscow, a Chinese government spokesman said: “We believe the important common understandings between the two presidents will further deepen political mutual trust, add new substance to strategic co-ordination, promote practical co-operation in various fields, bring more benefits to the two peoples, and contribute more stability and positive energy to the international community.”

Putin was blunter about the charm offensive with which he intended to greet Xi, whose economic as well as diplomatic support has become vital thanks to western sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine. He said he would make it a “special visit” for the Chinese leader. “We will prepare a good and eventful program,” Putin said last month. “He will be our main guest.”

Among the other foreign leaders to have arrived in Russia yesterday was Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, and the Venezuelan dictator President Maduro. Aleksandar Vucic, the president of Serbia, also arrived, in a visit that is likely to draw the ire of the EU. While the Balkan country has long wanted to join the bloc, it also maintains close ties with Russia and a shared aversion to NATO since its involvement in the Kosovo war.

China and Russia have had an up-and-down relationship with each other since the Second World War – and with the memory of the war itself.

While Stalin’s support was vital for Chairman Mao eventually to win the Chinese civil war in 1949 and establish his domestic political dominance, the two communist parties fell out in the 1950s and 1960s and China quietly took America’s side in the Cold War. Since America’s “pivot to Asia” under President Obama, Russia and China have patched up their relationship, seeing themselves as natural allies in the face of American “regime change” policies.

The two countries suffered by some distance the most deaths in the war – about 20 million in China, and even more in Russia, together accounting for more victims than the rest of the world put together. The Chinese government spokesman called the two countries “the two main theatres” of the war and said they had made “historic contributions to secure the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War”.

In Xi’s view, the shared Russian and Chinese experience of invasion and suffering in the world war is directly linked to support for the United Nations, created in its wake. Xi’s affirmation of solidarity with Putin is thus an implicit rebuke to any attempt by America to undermine the UN or global institutions more generally, or to assert its own pre-eminence within them.

Trump, of course, has added his own unique voice to the historiography, saying America “did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result”. He said he was renaming May 8 “Victory Day for the Second World War” and November 11 “Victory Day for the First World War”.

“We won both wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance,” he said.

The renaming is a sign that, as Orwell noted, the fight for the past and the fight for the future are the same thing.

The Times