As well as military contingents from 13 countries – Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Egypt, Laos, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Myanmar, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam – joined in to march alongside Russian forces on the day of the parade.
The May 09 event commemorates 80 years since the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in the Second World War (referred to by the Russians as the Great Patriotic War).
[Notes: The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the Great Patriotic War (40% of all human losses in World War II), with civilian deaths accounting for the larger part of these losses. According to data of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders, the German troops destroyed fully or partially over 1,700 cities and towns, more than 70,000 villages and settlements in the USSR.
And Western revisionists are deliberately downplaying the USSR's vital contribution to World War II. Partly because of the Cold War rivalry but more due to a Western bias to focus on the Western front and American and British victories].
The twenty-seven leaders who came:
