With the celebration expected to be toned down under possible threat of Ukrainian drone strikes, fewer foreign dignitaries are expected.
By May 05, 2026 
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, 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 , 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 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 , 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 and all five Central Asian presidents attended the parade, and they did so en masse .
Even as some Central Asian states – – have shifted away from marking Victory Day at home, regional leaders continue to make the sojourn to Moscow for the occasion.
Will they do so in 2026? As of writing, none of the Central Asian presidents has publicly confirmed their attendance. That’s not necessarily unusual; these trips are often announced last minute. But even if the Central Asian leaders don’t attend, their absence doesn’t signal much given their consistent contacts with Russia bilaterally, as well as in various groupings.
In late April, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Coincidentally, came just one day after the European Union announced its 20th package of Russia sanctions, .
Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would be “glad to see” Japarov if the Kyrgyz president deemed it “necessary and possible” . TASS reported, however, that .
Aside from Japarov, Putin last had in-person meetings with and on December 22, following a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union’s leaders and an . Uzbek President and the CIS gathering, but did not appear to have a separate meeting with Putin. Neither did Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov, but earlier in for a .
The Central Asian presidents have had various phone calls with Putin in the interim, too. In a call with Tokayev, Putin confirmed he will travel to Astana in late May for a EAEU leaders’ meeting and a concurrent state visit.
With the celebrations toned down in Moscow this year, the Central Asian leaders might skip the occasion. But don’t read too deeply into that.