2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade
Being a landmark jubilee parade honoring the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory in the European continent, the 2015 parade was the largest and most lavish held in Russian and Soviet history, but observers noted that a real cult of Victory had developed in Russia, Putin government used the celebration to legitimize its aggressive policy towards Ukraine[1][2][3] (e.g., wide use of the St. George ribbon[4][5]), most wartime allies in the Western world refused to attend the event, instead, leader of China and India, etc.
Following the official parade, over 500,000 Russians and foreign attendees marched through central Moscow in commemoration of those who perished and those who survived World War II.
The Moscow leg of this parade, which is an annual Victory Day tradition called the March of the Immortal Regiment and observed in numerous other Russian cities and in several other countries, was led by President Putin whose father served during the war.
[27] The UK was represented by the grandson of World War II leader British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Nicholas Soames.
A number of EU countries including the Czech Republic, Hungary and Greece came under US and/or EU pressure not to attend the Victory Day Parade due to the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the subsequent War in Donbass, resulting in Czech President Miloš Zeman subsequently banning the US ambassador from functions at Prague Castle.
The following countries opted not to participate in this year's parade in Moscow, although most sent their respective ambassadors as part of the diplomatic corps: Australia, Belarus (which held its own victory day celebrations on the same day),[28] Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany, Georgia, Israel, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, United States, Finland, Croatia, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Sweden, Estonia, Japan.
As per tradition, 26 other Russian major cities (Sevastopol and Kerch in the disputed Crimea included) held their parades, and joint civil-military parades were hosted by 50 other towns and cities nationwide, plus 5 fleet reviews in Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad (Baltic Fleet), Sevastopol (Black Sea), Severnomorsk (Northern) and Vladivostok (Pacific).
Victory Day parades and celebrations were also held in the following CIS member nations: The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic of Novorossiya, in the midst of the fighting in the Donbass, held on 9 May in Donetsk the first public Victory Day parade of the so-called "United Armed Forces of Novorossiya" (military branch of the separatist organisation) together with the federal level Ministries of Internal Affairs and Emergency Situations.
[37] Also rehearsing for the parade are the massed military bands of the Armed Forces, the MVD, EMERCOM and the Moscow Garrison, all to be conducted for the 13th straight year by Lieutenant General Valery Khalilov, the Senior Director of Music of the Bands Service of the Russian Armed Forces since 2002, with a combined number of more than a thousand military bandsmen, and the world-famous Corps of Drums of the Moscow Military Music College "Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov", under the leadership of Colonel Alexander Gerasimov, the long-time college director, which has always (with a brief break from 2009 to 2011) had the privilege of leading the parade.
