Russia celebrates Victory Day on May 9. This year's event marks the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany with a military parade in Moscow. On both occasions - in 1995 and in 2005 - Western leaders attended. Then, there was a sense of hope for a new relationship between the West and Russia.

According to Nina Khrushcheva this year's celebration will only see a handful of "high-profile guests", mainly "the leaders of China, India, and North Korea". Yet a week ago Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that Kim Jong-un would not attend the ceremony in Moscow, saying the North Korean leader had decided to stay at home due to "internal issues".

Russia had sent dozens of invitations to foreign leaders to this commemorative event. But many have decided to stay away due to Russia's annexation of Crimea and actions in eastern Ukraine. Chinese and Greek leaders Xi Jinping and Alexis Tsipras are expected to attend. The Czech President Milos Zeman and Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico have said they will take part in the commemorations, but skip the parade. Viktor Orbán, Hungary's prime minister, is staying at home, and so is the country’s president . Aleksander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, a member of Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, isn’t going to turn up either. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, and his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow are coming.

Angela Merkel will not be there for May 9, but will travel to Moscow the following day. It shows how she had weighed up what decision to make. On the one hand she knows all too well the historical and present complex relationship between Berlin and Moscow. On the other she is also aware of Germany’s responsibility and culpability. She can't stay away, but doesn't want to attend the parade because of how Putin has manipulated it, making the Soviet Red Army as a liberator, instead of an oppressor. However she has found a compromise worthy of war veterans and the huge suffering of the people of the Soviet Union. She will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on May 10, together with Putin, to honour the memory of the millions who died during the Second World War.

Nina Khrushcheva mentions Robert Paxton's 1966 book "Parades and Politics at Vichy", that tells how Philippe Pétain, Hitler's stooge in France under German occupation, "used pageantry, reactionary politics" to show the world that his regime mattered. Paxton, a historian specialising in Vichy France, fascism, and Europe during the World War II would see some parallels between Pétain's France and Putin's Russia - a police state.

Pétain was lauded as France's saviour and Putin is hailed as a leader, who tries to restore Russia's former glory. Putin would no doubt agree with Pétain's puritanism, who replaced France's national motto of "liberté, égalité and fraternité" with "travail, familie, patrie" (work, family, fatherland). Pétain called for family values, forbade women to wear revealing clothing, abhorred divorce and demanded that women be mothers. Putin would also share these views.

In 1940, a majority of politicians of the right and left agreed with the new French fascism. As Paxton said: "Never had so many Frenchmen been ready to accept discipline and authority." The same in Russia, Putin's foreign policies are widely supported by many Russians and they are ready to put up with hardships and bear the brunt of international sanctions.