All five Central Asian presidents are scheduled to attend a parade on Red Square in Moscow on May 9 to commemorate the victory in the Second World War in 1945, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reported.
Yury Ushakov, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, on May 7 said Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, and Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhammedov will attend the event in the Russian capital’s Red Square.
Ushakov added that President Miguel Diaz-Canel of Cuba, President Thongloun Sisoulith of Laos, and President Umaro Sissoco Embalo of Guinea-Bissau will also be present.
Armenian President Nikol Pashinian, who attended the celebrations last year, said earlier that he will not be able to take part in the event this year.
During his more than 20 years in power, Putin has increasingly tried to make the memory of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War an integral part of national identity.
Foreign attendance of the May 9 celebration has waned since Russia’s annexation in 2014 of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
