I have just been watching the Victory Day parade on Red Square. A few observations.

In the end a total of 24 dignitaries made it from the billed 29, which is more than normal, but still a lot less than in pre-war days. The most notable absentee was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who stayed home to deal with the escalating conflict with Pakistan. It’s not a full scale war and probably won’t go that far, but it has now gone as far as it can without becoming an actual war.

Of course, the notable non-former Soviet Union (FSU) attendee was Chinese President Xi Jinping, who spent the whole time at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s side and appeared to be chatting to him occasionally without an interpreter. It’s not clear if Xi has learnt some English. Putin has been taking lessons, but his English is appalling, and he sounds like a robot when he tries to speak it.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was also there, but took a back chair on the podium, which I took as subtle signalling that he has a commitment to be in Moscow as a leading BRICS member, but at the same time, he also wanted to (literally) keep as much distance as he could between himself and the Xi-Putin duo. Interestingly, while the Russian TV coverage constantly played on Putin chatting to Xi, it barely showed Lula at all.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attendance at the parade was contumacious as he is seen as a moderate from the BRICS.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Serbian President Aleksander Vucic were the other two notable guests. Vucic has admitted he is there to do a new gas deal with Russia, ironically just as the EU is revving up to ban Russian gas entirely, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Fico is also going to talk gas between canapés.

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic admitted that he went to Moscow to attend the parade in the hopes of doing a new gas deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A huge row is brewing over this EU gas policy, which is supposed to come into effect and end gas imports entirely by 2027. But I still don’t believe, as things stand, that it can be done. There is simply not enough LNG in the world for Europe to end the circa 30-40bcm of gas it imports from Russia. Russia’s share in the EU’s gas mix has gone up from 14% in 2022 to 19% now, which is still down from the 40% pre-war.

The sanctions assume that several large new projects will come online in the US by then to make up the shortfall: there is a planned 122bcm of new capacity in the pipeline, which will do the trick, but they need new long-term contracts which are not in place yet. Qatar is also planning to develop the massive North Field that will add another 115bcm, but again the contracts are missing. And the EU was supposed to be winding down gas anyway, not committing to massive new long-term deals, as gas is supposed to be an intermediary fuel in the energy transition.

And all the plans to develop this new LNG capacity could be scuppered if Russia turns on its piped gas deliveries to Europe again. Reuters reported this week that there are serious discussions about doing just that with some sort of US partition as traders or even buying a significant stake Russian national gas champion Gazprom. Just the surviving strand of Nord Stream 1&2 pipelines could supply 25bcm – more than half of the current deliveries – from tomorrow and way cheaper than LNG. And if the other three strands are fixed (a snip at an estimated $800mn) then there is 100bcm available. Add deliveries via Ukraine and you get another 140bcm-odd. If any of this happens, then that will kill the new US and Qatari LNG plans.

And it's not even clear that the EU needs that much gas. During former German chancellor Angela Merkel's frequent trips to Moscow, Putin was constantly badgering her to sign long-term contracts, and she kept telling him that the EU would phase out gas entirely by 2027 as part of the Green Deal. There are a lot of questions still hanging over this policy.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was also in Moscow and even brought a platoon of soldiers that marched alongside the Russian troops. Sisi is another big Putin buddy and an increasingly important ally in MENA. Egypt flipflops between being a net importer of gas and a net exporter. It is also heavily reliant on Russian grain imports.

Military contingents from Azerbaijan, Vietnam, China, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and even Mongolia – the Moscow-Ulaanbaatar relationship has not caught much attention, has it? But Mongolia’s presence is another gas partnership as Power of Siberia 2 (POS2) will run over Mongolia and some construction has already started on that leg.

A contingent from the Chinese army participated in the parade. 

The other international guests were pretty thin on the ground. Noticeably, Xi and Putin spent most of their time sitting and standing surrounded by the C5 pack of Central Asian presidents plus a smattering of Asian leaders and a few Africans, most noticeably Ibrahim Traoré, the interim president of Burkina Faso. Action figure Stephen Segal was also in the crowd.

All the presidents of the five Central Asian republics were at the parade.

Also everyone noticed that Defence Minister Andrei Belousov turned up in a suit, not military uniform. This actually went down well as he has no military experience to speak of and was hired more as an economic manager than a military strategist; that part has been left to the generals. Putin made it clear to his generals that there is an important economic component to Russia’s modern military in his “guns and butter” speech last year where he made it clear that not only is the military expected to win on the battlefield, but part of that is by outproducing the enemy and Belousov is formerly one of Putin’s top economic advisors.

The foreign battalions were the main attraction of the parade and clearly designed to show unity with and loyalty to Moscow. The hardware section was pretty thin. They led out with the legendary and much loved by the Russians T-34 tanks that won the battle of Kursk, and arguably the whole war. (There is even a Russian-language movie about the T-34 that I can recommend.)

But the rest was pretty unimpressive. There were the obligatory Iskander cruise missiles, S-400 surface-to-air defence system and a couple of YARS nuclear ICBMs to remind everyone of what happens if you attack Russia. But I guess most of the equipment is on the frontline in Donbas. Where there are usually tanks, there were APCs and drones - Orlan-10 and Orlan-30 UAVs, Lancet and Geran-2 loitering munitions. The Armata main battle tank (MBT) was a no-show. It is Russia’s most modern and powerful tank, that embarrassingly broke down on Tverskaya on the way to Red Square last time they took it out, after its engine caught fire.

The jet flyover was also a bit thin with a few SU-34s trailing tricolour smoke, but things like the lethal Tu-190 bombers that have featured in previous parades were missing.

All-in-all I think Putin will be pleased as he had enough important people there (mostly Xi) to defy the attempts to isolate him, but it was still less than he could have hoped for. Moreover, Fico and Vucic were hardly there to show fealty to Putin; they both came because of the energy deals. But that is the way the world works now, as we have been arguing; it’s now a transactional multipolar world model, and now the unknown soldier has got his roses, I don’t think that Putin has a problem sitting down with all the other delegates to talk gas- and gun-shop, which is what the other half of this day is all about.

Apropos to the talk of war today, we sent our new Ukraine correspondent Jamie Onslow on a trip to the Pokrovsk area in Ukraine, close to the frontline, where he talked to Internally Displaced People (IDPs) to have a look at the human cost of war.

And it was predictably depressing. One of the things that stood out to me is that the way the compensation system works is that normal people are incentivised to stay in their homes as long as possible because if they are officially evacuated, they get a certificate that entitles them to financial help to find a new home. However, if they leave it too late (or the evacuation order comes too late) and their village becomes too dangerous, the inspectors who issue the certificates won’t go to their village to certify them. So they get nothing. And these people don’t have much money to start with. Without wanting to be glib: war is hell.