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China’s People’s Liberation Army is set to participate in Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow and Belarus’s parade in Minsk on Friday, the ministry of defence in Beijing said on Monday.
The Victory Day parades are being held in Russia and China to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany at the hands of the Soviet Union.
“At the invitation of the defence ministries of Russia and Belarus, the Guard of Honour of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) will dispatch contingents to respectively participate in the military parades held in Moscow of Russia and Minsk of Belarus on 9 May to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” China’s ministry of defence said in a statement.
Videos shared on Chinese social media have shown PLA’s troops rehearsing in Minsk and Moscow in the past week.
China’s participation alongside Russia and Belarus comes at a time when the US is brokering peace in the Ukraine war by calling for a ceasefire and also engaged in a trade war with Beijing. Russian president Vladimir Putin has proposed a three-day ceasefire with Ukraine around the 9 May celebration – one of the most important days in the Russian calendar.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is also expected to visit Moscow and appear alongside Mr Putin at Red Square later this week. Beijing said the two leaders are set to engage in “strategic communication” during his official visit.
"During the talks, the main issues of further development of relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction, as well as current issues on the international and regional agenda will be discussed," a statement from the Kremlin said.
Several other national leaders are expected at the celebrations, including the presidents of Brazil and Serbia, and the prime minister of Slovakia.
This is not the first time China has sent an honour guard to Russia. However, this will be the first such participation by China’s honour guard in Belarus who have not participated in the country’s Victory Day parade. Earlier, China’s honour guard had participated in Belarus’s annual Independence Day parade in 2018.
China’s participation in the grand celebrations by Russia is likely to show its position on the post World War scenario.
A major reason for the high-profile celebration this year was that “some countries have tried to distort the post-war history and order” through unilateral sanctions and tariff wars, Zhao Long, deputy director of the Institute for International Strategic and Security Studies at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies told the South China Morning Post.
On Sunday, the Russian state news agency RIA cited Mr Putin, in a documentary film aired to mark 25 years since his first inauguration as Russian president, as saying that Russia's relations with China were: "truly strategic in nature, deep-seated".
"Our national interests coincide," it quoted him as saying.
English (US) ·