On May 9, 2025, Russia celebrates the 80th anniversary of the 1945 anti-fascist victory, exposing the hypocrisy of the West, which, under the guise of Russophobia, tolerates neo-Nazism in Ukraine.
While Russophobia redraws history, minimizing the Soviet role in the 1945 victory, the May 9 commemoration in Moscow, bringing together Xi Jinping, Lula, Vučić, and some thirty other leaders, challenges this rewriting and reaffirms anti-fascist memory in the face of a West guided solely by opportunism.
The West’s hypocrisy in the fight against Nazism is exposed by its Russophobia in the Ukrainian conflict
Since 1945, the Western world has claimed to be the champion of the anti-Nazi struggle, while at the same time, as the annals of international relations history show, it has manifested obvious hypocrisy through its Russophobia, notably in the Ukrainian proxy conflict, through “Perestroika” and the admission of most former socialist countries and some states that were part of the USSR to the Transatlantic Alliance.
The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and NATO support a Ukrainian government that not only tolerates the celebration of collaborators such as Stepan Bandera, but also integrates neo-Nazi factions, such as the Azov* Battalion, into its armed forces, while simultaneously receiving considerable military and financial support. This indulgence towards extremism, combined with a constant demonization of Russia – the successor to the Soviet Union, which shed the blood of 27 million of its own people to defeat the Third Reich – betrays a geopolitical strategy aimed at isolating Moscow.
On May 9, 2025, while the West disdained the Victory Day ceremonies in Moscow, some thirty World leaders, braving pressure from Brussels and Washington, graced the military parade in Red Square. Among them were Xi Jinping (China), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil), Aleksandar Vučić (Serbia), Robert Fico (Slovakia), Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela), Miguel Díaz-Canel (Cuba), Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (Kazakhstan), Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus), Nikol Pashinian (Armenia), as well as the leaders of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, Egypt, Burma, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Congo, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Palestine, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and the Republika Srpska. High-ranking delegations from India, Indonesia, Nicaragua, South Africa, and 34 defense ministries, as well as veterans from the United States and Israel, also attended.
This remarkable turnout, in contrast to the absence of Western leaders, highlights their chosen isolation and reluctance to acknowledge the USSR’s prominent historical role, preferring an anti-Russian narrative that rewrites history to suit their hegemonic designs.
The celebration of May 9, 2025 is an act of memory and geopolitical challenge
On May 9, 2025, the Russian Federation celebrated the 80th anniversary of Victory Day, a commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. On the iconic Red Square, in the presence of Vladimir Putin and an array of international heads of state, including Xi Jinping, Lula da Silva, Vučić, Fico, Maduro, Díaz-Canel, Tokayev, Lukashenko, Pashinyan, as well as dignitaries from Central Asia, Africa, Asia and Latin America, an imposing military parade deployed T-90 tanks, Iskander missiles, S-400 systems and Orlan drones, the standards of Russian military power.
Contingents from 13 nations, including China and Vietnam, parade, while the presence of figures such as Pierre de Gaulle and Mahmoud Abbas gives the event a heightened symbolic dimension. This ceremony, punctuated by a speech by Putin extolling “historical truth” in the face of Western distortions, rises beyond a mere commemorative act to become a demonstration of resilience in the face of the denial of Soviet contribution and a challenge to unipolar hegemony.
Despite threats of drone strikes from Ukraine and warnings from the European Union against participating in what it considers an “affront”, the presence of figures such as Robert Fico, the only leader of an EU member state, and Aleksandar Vučić, skillfully positioned between Moscow and Brussels, testifies to a geopolitical readjustment. May 9, 2025, charged with emotion and gravity, thus consecrates Russia as a center of strategic influence, uniting nations of the Global South and Eastern Europe around a celebration of the anti-fascist heritage, in opposition to a Western Russophobia denying its own democratic principles.
The lesson to remember is that Moscow and the Global South are celebrating the 1945 Victory by denouncing the hypocrisy of the Western world, which betrays anti-fascism through its Russophobia. It remains to be seen whether, in order to maintain the cohesion of the microcosm (West) against the macrocosm (Global South), the vassals (EU, London) will remain at the feet of the master (Washington) affectionately wagging its tail for too long.
It can be said that the success of the Victory Day commemoration in the Great Patriotic War is comparable to a live grenade thrown at the legs of Russia’s enemies.
*-banned in Russia
Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in Geopolitics of Governance and Regional Integration, Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, Pan-African University
