Despots Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have pledged to take on the world order together as ‘old friends.’
Seen today in Moscow to celebrate Victory Day with Putin, China‘s president Xi said that his nation was ‘ready to work with Russia to promote an equal, orderly, multiolar and inclusive economic globalisation.’
He said Beijing would stand with Moscow in the face of ‘hegemonic bullying’, adding: ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying behaviour, China will work with Russia to shoulder the special responsibilities of major world powers.’
He added that he was ‘visit Russia against at the invitation of my old friend president Putin.’
President Xi is the most high-profile guest at Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day celebrations, in which Russia is celebrating victory over the Nazis during the Second World War.
The Russian leader said today: ‘The victory over fascism, achieved at the cost of enormous sacrifices, is of lasting significance.
‘Together with our Chinese friends, we firmly stand guard over historical truth, protect the memory of the events of the war years, and counteract modern manifestations of neo-Nazism and militarism’, making a thinly veiled reference to his own justification to his invasion of Ukraine.
Xi said they would ‘jointly promote the correct view of the history of World War Two, safeguard the authority and status of the United Nations, resolutely defend the rights and interests of China, Russia and the vast majority of developing countries, and work together to promote an equal, orderly, multipolar, and inclusive economic globalisation’.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) during their meeting at the Grand Kremlin Palace, on May 8, 2025 in Moscow, Russia
Russian servicemen march towards Red Square for the general rehearsal of the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 7, 2025
Members of Russia’s National Guard keep order as a column of tanks T-80BVM moves along a road on the day of a rehearsal for a military parade, which marks the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Moscow, Russia, May 7, 2025
The two leaders spoke after approaching each other along a red carpet from opposite ends of one of the Kremlin’s most opulent halls and shaking hands in front of the cameras. Each greeted the other as ‘dear friend’.
Though Russia was allied with the West in the fight against the Nazis, its celebrations are totally out of step with Europe’s celebrations.
While almost all of Europe is today celebrating VE Day, Russia is holding its own ceremony tomorrow with a huge military parade on Red Square in central Moscow to mark the massive Soviet contribution to defeat Nazi Germany.
Even if the end of World War II in Europe spawned one of the most joyous days the continent ever lived, Thursday’s 80th anniversary of V-E Day is haunted as much by the specter of current-day conflict as it celebrates the defeat of ultimate evil.
Hitler’s Nazi Germany had finally surrendered after a half-decade of invading other European powers and propagating racial hatred that led to genocide, the Holocaust and the murdering of millions.
That surrender and the explosion of hope for a better life is being celebrated with parades in London and Paris and towns across Europe while even the leaders of erstwhile mortal enemies France and Germany are bonding again.
Germany’s new foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, paid tribute to ‘the enormous sacrifices of the Allies’ in helping his country win its freedom from the Nazis and said that millions of people were ‘disenfranchised and tormented by the Nazi regime.’
‘Hardly any day has shaped our history as much as May 8, 1945,’ he said in a statement. ‘Our historical responsibility for this breach of civilization and the commemoration of the millions of victims of the Second World War unleashed by Nazi Germany gives us a mandate to resolutely defend peace and freedom in Europe today.’
Russian President Vladimir Putin (2-R) and China’s President Xi Jinping (C) attend their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, 8 May 2025
The aircraft of President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping is seen landing at Moscow’s Vnukovo-2 Airport in Moscow, Russia on May 7, 2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping speak during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, May 8, 2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin, second left, talks during meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, center right, at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 8, 2025
A motorcade transporting Chinese President Xi Jinping before his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, May 8, 2025
His comments underscore that former European enemies may thrive – to the extent that the 27-nation European Union even won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize – but that the outlook has turned gloomy over the past year.
Bodies continue to pile up in Ukraine, where Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion started the worst war on the continent since 1945. The rise of the hard right in several EU member states is putting the founding democratic principles of the bloc under increasing pressure.
And even NATO, that trans-Atlantic military alliance that assured peace in Europe under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and its military clout, is under internal strain rarely seen since its inception.
‘The time of Europe’s carefree comfort, joyous unconcern is over. Today is the time of European mobilization around our fundamental values and our security,’ Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a Dutch memorial event in the lead-up to the celebrations.
It makes this unlikely stretch of peace in Europe anything but a given.
‘This peace is always unsure. There are always some clouds above our heads. Let’s do what we can, so that peace should reign forever in Europe,’ Robert Chot, a Belgian World War II veteran, told a solemn gathering of the European legislature.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola sounded gloomy.
‘Once again war has returned to our continent, once again cities are being bombed, civilians attacked, families torn apart. The people of Ukraine are fighting not only for their land, but for freedom, for sovereignty, for democracy, just as our parents and our grandparents once did,’ she told the legislature on Wednesday.
‘The task before us today is the same as it was then to honor memory, to protect democracy, to preserve peace,’ Metsola said.
Commemorations have been going all week through Europe, and Britain has taken a lead. Here too, the current-day plight of Ukraine in its fight against Russia took center stage.
Members of the delegations, led by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, attend a welcoming ceremony before their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 8, 2025
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, May 8, 2025
‘The idea that this was all just history and it doesn’t matter now somehow, is completely wrong,’ U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. ‘Those values of freedom and democracy matter today.’
In London later Thursday, a service will be held in Westminster Abbey and a concert, for 10,000 members of the public, at Horse Guards Parade. In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to oversee a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.
And in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz will again highlight how Germany has remodeled itself into a beacon of European democracy by laying a wreath at the central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny.
