Will Any Central Asian Leaders Head to Moscow for Victory Day 2026? |
Crossroads Asia | Diplomacy | Central Asia
Will Any Central Asian Leaders Head to Moscow for Victory Day 2026?
With the celebration expected to be toned down under possible threat of Ukrainian drone strikes, fewer foreign dignitaries are expected.
Russia’s May 9, 2025 Victory Day celebrations were large, drawing at least 27 foreign leaders, including all five Central Asian presidents and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The military parade through Red Square included marching bands, military units, foreign troops, and rolling ranks of tanks and other armored vehicles, as well as missile systems like the Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile system and S-400 surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, despite the ongoing war in Ukraine. It was, after all, the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe.
The 2026 celebrations will be markedly less grand, with Russian defense officials stating that due to “the current operational situation” there will be no armored vehicles or missile systems in the parade for the first time in nearly two decades. As reported by the Guardian, citing Russian military analysts and bloggers, the absence of showy hardware at the parade could be attributed to a fear of long-range Ukrainian drone strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it outright: “They cannot afford military equipment — and they fear drones may buzz over Red Square.”
As Victory Day approaches, RSVPs are trickling in. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will be in attendance, but what about the Central Asian leaders?
Attendance by Central Asia’s leaders at Russia’s Victory Day celebration has varied over the years.
While four of the five Central Asian presidents attended the delayed-to-June Victory Day parade in 2020, only Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon attended in 2021. None of the region’s presidents attended in 2022, when the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was in its early days.
But the tide turned thereafter. In 2023 and 2024 all five Central Asian presidents attended the parade, and they did so en masse last year as well.
Even as some Central Asian states – like Kazakhstan – have shifted away from........