Saleh Al Satari, 12, who lost his leg in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza and recently received a prosthetic limb in Jordan, puts on the prosthesis in his family tent at a camp for displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
The day celebrating Moscow’s defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 is Russia’s biggest secular holiday. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and others will gather in the Russian capital on Thursday for the 80th anniversary and watch a parade featuring thousands of troops accompanied by tanks and missiles.Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry urged foreign countries not to send military representatives to take part in the parade, as some have in the past. None is officially confirmed for this year’s event.
AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports all four international airports around Moscow temporarily suspended flights today as Russian forces intercepted more than 100 Ukrainian drones.Ukraine will regard the participation of foreign military personnel as “an affront to the memory of the victory over Nazism, to the memory of millions of Ukrainian front-line soldiers who liberated our country and all of Europe from Nazism eight decades ago,” a statement on the ministry’s website said.Security is expected to be tight. Russian officials have warned that internet access could be restricted in Moscow during the celebrations and have told residents not to set off fireworks.
Putin last week declared the brief unilateral truce “on humanitarian grounds” from May 8. Ukraine has demanded a longer ceasefire.Russia has effectively rejected a U.S. proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting by insisting on far-reaching conditions. Ukraine has accepted that proposal, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that the brief truce “doesn’t sound like much, but it’s … a lot if you knew where we started from.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that ceasefire orders had been issued to Russian troops, but soldiers would retaliate if fired upon., which Israel has prevented for more than two months. The Trump administration is also trying to negotiate a
, which backs several anti-Israel militant groups, including Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.Speaking to reporters in Abu Dhabi on the final day of his trip, Trump said he was looking to resolve a range of global crises, including Gaza. “We’re looking at Gaza,” he said. “And we’ve got to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving. A lot of people are — there’s a lot of bad things going on.”
AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports Israeli strikes kill at least 93 people in Gaza as President Donald Trump wraps up his Middle East visit.The Gaza Health Ministry said 31 children and 27 women were killed and hundreds more wounded in Friday’s airstrikes.