Venezuela’s fall deepens under Maduro’s rule

What was akin to a celebration of global dictators and political rogues, Venezuela's Marxist dictator, Nicholas Maduro, visited Moscow to join Vladimir Putin in celebrating Russia's May 9 Victory Day Parade, the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's triumph over Nazi Germany. Mr Putin's pantheon included communist China’s leader Xi Jinping and Brazil's President Lula da Silva, among others.

- John J Metzler

Victory Day remains a sacred day for Russia and a symbolic high point in Mr Putin’s cult of personality, pseudo-patriotism, and propaganda. Massive military parades have long evoked the former Soviets and now, of course, Mr Putin’s Russia.

As an extra touch, Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops goose-stepped in Red Square to honour the Moscow-Beijing alliance.

Russia’s Victory Day follows the Western allies’ Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), celebrated by the US, France, and the United Kingdom as the surrender of Nazi Germany.

But for Mr Putin, the narrative of World War II and the current Ukraine war mix seamlessly into a witch's brew of misappropriating history for his current aggression into a kind of political pornography so well tuned by the Kremlin.

But when Mr Maduro returned to his capital, Caracas, he was soon shocked by the escape of five key political opposition figures who had been whisked out of the country by the United States. The five, who were sheltering in the Argentine embassy in Caracas for over a year, were spirited out after Donald Trump gave the nod for a special extraction operation.