China to Stage a Show of Force with Grand Military Parade attended by Putin and Kim Jong Un by Jennifer Jett and Janis Mackey Frayer, NBC News

China ‘raises the stakes’ as Putin to meet with Kim & Xi at military parade

But the tyrant seems to be too scared to meet Zelensky, as Moscow ruled out plans for a direct peace summit with the Ukrainian president. Putin’s attendance comes as Zelensky insists that a meeting with him would be “the most effective way forward” to end the war in Ukraine. But while US President Donald Trump has pushed to broker a Ukraine-Russia summit, Moscow has rejected any immediate Putin-Zelensky talks. Putin and Kim will be among 26 foreign leaders to attend next week’s parade in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Not a single foreign leader is expected from the US or Western Europe. China, Russia, and North Korea have been close allies for years.

The leaders of Russia and North Korea will be in attendance Wednesday as China displays its growing military power in a show of unity against the West.

HONG KONG — China’s military is getting stronger, and it wants the world to know it.

The world’s largest active military, with more than 2 million personnel, is holding one of its biggest parades ever on Wednesday, a highly choreographed “Victory Day” spectacle to mark the 80th anniversary of Imperial Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II.

The grand occasion in Beijing will showcase not just China’s growing ability to rival the United States in any future conflict, but support from some of the world’s most heavily sanctioned nations in a display of unity against the West.

Thousands of troops will march through Tiananmen Square, where they will be reviewed by Chinese President Xi Jinping as heads of government and state from 26 other countries look on.

Topping the guest list are Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has pressed on with his war against Ukraine despite a U.S. peace push, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in a rare departure from his isolated, nuclear-armed state.

Leaders from the United States and other Western governments have declined to attend the parade, partly because of the presence of Putin.

It comes amid heightened military tensions in the region as China clashes with neighbors in the South China Sea and the U.S. and its allies brace for potential conflict over Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.

“It’s definitely a show of force,” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “It’s a means to show China’s neighbors, other countries around the world, that China’s military is formidable.”

The parade will showcase China’s growing military power under Xi, who has overseen a modernization campaign as well as political purges of senior officials and even defense ministers.

“It’s now become a much more capable force that is increasingly a near peer, if not a true peer, to the U.S. military in many respects,” said Elsa B. Kania, a doctoral candidate at Harvard and an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington that specializes in U.S. national security issues. To read more go to the link below:

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/china-military-parade-beijing-ww2-putin-kim-jong-un-rcna227679