Twenty-six foreign heads of state and government will attend a large military parade in Beijing on 3 September, with no Western leaders among them except Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico. The parade will mark Victory Day and the formal surrender of Japan, and will feature tens of thousands of troops at Tiananmen Square surveyed by President Xi Jinping alongside foreign dignitaries and senior Chinese leaders. Attendees include Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Masoud Pezashkian, Prabowo Subianto, Woo Won-shik and Aleksandar Vucic. The United Nations will be represented by under secretary general Li Junhua. Russia faces extensive Western sanctions and economic strain, and North Korea remains under long-standing UN sanctions for its weapons programs.
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are among the world leaders who will attend a military parade with President Xi Jinping in Beijing next week, in a show of collective defiance amid western pressure. No western leaders will be among the 26 foreign heads of state and government attending the parade next week with the exception of Robert Fico, prime minister of Slovakia, a member of the European Union according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
Russia, which Beijing counts as a strategic partner, has been battered by multiple rounds of western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with its economy on the brink of slipping into recession. Putin, wanted by the international criminal court, last travelled in China in 2024. North Korea, a formal treaty ally of China's, has been under UN security council sanctions since 2006 over its development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Kim last visited China in January 2019.
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