The presence of Chinese president Xi Jinping as ‘guest of honour’ at Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day military parade in Moscow today, which will include soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is both chilling and fraudulent. Chilling, because it is the most explicit endorsement yet by Xi of Russia’s militarism and its poisonous narratives about the Ukraine war, and fraudulent because the Chinese Communist party played a marginal role at best in the Allied victory in the second world war.
In the run-up to today’s parade, Putin has linked victory over Nazi Germany with his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which he has falsely claimed is to achieve ‘denazification’ of the country. The Kremlin has served up daily propaganda depicting the Ukraine war as a continuation of the ‘Great Patriotic War’, comparing the soldiers fighting in Ukraine to ‘our grandfathers’ who achieved victory in 1945.
The Communist party played only a marginal and cynical role in the fight against the Japanese
A new monument unveiled in Khimki, near Moscow, depicts a Red Army soldier side by side with a Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine.
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