Russia marks the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two on Friday with a military parade attended by China's Xi Jinping that Moscow fears Ukraine will try to disrupt after three years of devastating war.
President Vladimir Putin, the longest-serving Kremlin chief since Josef Stalin, will speak at a 0700 GMT parade where thousands of Russian soldiers usually march by and drive military hardware such as intercontinental ballistic missiles and tanks past Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square.
The Kremlin says the attendance of Russian allies such as Xi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and several dozen leaders from the former Soviet Union, Africa, Asia and Latin America shows Russia is not isolated from the wider world even if Moscow's former WW2 Western allies want to stay away. From Europe, the leaders of Serbia and Slovakia will attend.
"The victory over fascism, achieved at the cost of enormous sacrifices, has an everlasting significance," Putin told Xi in the Kremlin. "The countless sacrifices made by both our peoples should never be forgotten."
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War Two, including many millions in Ukraine, but pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin, where Adolf Hitler committed suicide and the red Soviet Victory Banner was raised over the Reichstag in 1945.
For Russians - and for many of the peoples of the former Soviet Union - May 9 is the most sacred date in the calendar, and Putin, angry at what he says are attempts by the West to belittle the Soviet victory, has sought to use memories of WW2 to unite Russian society.
Chinese Communist Party historians say China's casualties in the 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War were 35 million. The Japanese occupation caused the displacement of as many as 100 million Chinese people and significant economic hardship, as well as the horrific 1937 Nanjing Massacre, during which an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 victims were killed.
Moscow and Kyiv do not publish accurate casualty numbers for the war in Ukraine, though U.S. President Donald Trump, who says he wants peace, says hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides have been killed and injured.
MOSCOW PARADE
Putin has sought to insulate Moscow from the grinding artillery and drone war being fought 600 km (370 miles) away in Ukraine, though Ukrainian drone attacks have in recent days disrupted air travel to the Russian capital.
The Kremlin said the military is doing everything it can to ensure security for the parade next to the Kremlin which Russia said was targeted in 2023 by Ukrainian drones.
Security is very tight in Moscow. Putin proposed a 72-hour ceasefire would run on May 8, May 9 and May 10, though Ukraine said Russia had broken the ceasefire, a claim dismissed as absurd by Moscow.
The Kremlin said military units from 13 countries, including China, will take part in the parade along with Russian troops, though it was unclear how North Korea - which has helped Russia fight in Ukraine - would be represented.
In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on allies to help it resist Russia, which now controls about a fifth of Ukraine.
"Evil cannot be appeased. It must be fought," Zelenskiy said, according to the Kyiv Post. He criticised Moscow's Victory Day parade. "It will be a parade of cynicism. There is just no other way to describe it. A parade of bile and lies."
