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President Vladimir Putin, the longest-serving Kremlin chief since Josef Stalin, stood beside China’s Xi Jinping, several dozen other leaders and Russian veterans on a roofed tribune beside Lenin’s mausoleum as Russian troops marched past. …

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 even if Moscow’s former WW2 Western allies want to stay away.

Chinese troops took part in the parade, and Putin shook hands with North Korean officers, praising them for their fighting skill. North Korean troops have helped Russia fight an incursion into its western Kursk region by Ukrainian forces seeking a bargaining chip in any peace talks.

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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.”