Former MP George Galloway appears in Moscow for Putin's Victory Day celebrations days after collecting award names after Hamas fighter in Tehran
The leader of the hard-left Workers Party of Britain made an appearance in Moscow as Russia 's Vladimir Putin celebrated Victory Day with a huge military parade.
George Galloway - who previously served as MP for Glasgow Hillhead, Glasgow Kelvin and then Bethnal Green and Bow - travelled to Russia this week to attend Putin's pageant through the city's Red Square on Friday.
Taking to X to share snaps of himself in Moscow, Galloway called the Victory Day Celebrations 'moving, emotional, inspiring, humbling.'
Pictures posted by the politician show him and his fourth wife Putri Gayatri Pertiwi - who is 30 years his junior - posing for the camera on Red Square.
At the event, which was attended by more than 20 world leaders, the Russian dictator showed off his tanks, missiles and troops in an impressive display.
One of the Russian leader's most high-profile guests was China 's President Xi Jingping, who sat next to Putin during the procession.
Galloway's visit to Russia on Friday comes after he travelled to Tehran this week to collect an award in honour of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed last year in an Israeli strike in the Iranian capital.
He was given the Martyr Ismail Haniyeh award at a media festival held in Tehran in recognition of his 'outspoken defence of Palestine.'
Having previously praised the assassinated Hamas leader as a 'martyr,' Galloway said in a speech said he was 'honoured' to receive the award, and also bragged about having Haniyeh's passport in his possession.
'I actually hold in my safe the passport of the because when we arrived with one of our convoys to break the siege on Gaza [in 2009], he had promised me a Palestinian passport but they had run out of Palestinian passports. So he gave me his own personal passport and it is one of my most treasured possessions,' the British politician boasted.
He went on to thank Iran for 'their steadfastness in support for the Palestinian people.'
'The truth is when Palestine is finally free, Iran will be able to take its place in the panoply of heroes who made it possible.'
The timing of Galloway's visit to Iran came as tensions between the UK and Tehran heightened last week following the arrest of four Iranian nationals over an alleged plot to attack Israel's London embassy.
Victory Day, which Russia marks on May 9, is the country's most important secular holiday.
The parade and other festivities underline Moscow's efforts to project its global power and cement the alliances it has forged while seeking a counterbalance to the West amid the conflict in Ukraine that is grinding through a fourth year.
World War II is a rare event in the nation's divisive history under Communist rule that is revered by all political groups, and the Kremlin has used that sentiment to encourage national pride and underline Russia's position as a global power.
The parade featured over 11,500 troops and more than 180 military vehicles, including tanks, armored infantry vehicles and artillery used on the battlefield in Ukraine
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in what it calls the Great Patriotic War in 1941-45, an enormous sacrifice that left a deep scar in the national psyche.
The timing of Galloway's visit to Russia comes as Sir Keir Starmer, along with the leaders of France, Germany and Poland, travelled to Kyiv on Saturday for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a show of unity after Putin's Victory Day parade.
Britain has been highly critical of Russia since it sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
Britain is ALREADY at war with Russia and ‘we are in pretty big trouble' admits defence expert in bombshell warning
RUSSIA is already at war with Britain, an author of the Government's defence review has warned. Fiona Hill, who was the White House's chief Russia adviser during Donald Trump 's first term, delivered the stark warning of the threat posed by Vladimir Putin. 4 4 4 She said: 'We are in pretty big trouble. "Russia has hardened as an adversary in ways that we probably hadn't anticipated.' Ms Hill said Moscow has been ' menacing the UK in various different ways ' for years, including poisonings and assassinations on British soil, carrying out cyber attacks and cutting sea cables. In her grim alert, the Kremlin expert said: 'Russia is at war with us.' And she warned that Britain can no longer rely on US military might to protect itself from enemy states. Ms Hill co-wrote the Strategic Defence Review, which warned the UK is facing its biggest threats since the Cold War — and set out plans to urgently build more bombs and guns to arm ourselves. Her comments came as Russian missiles blitzed Kharkiv, killing three people and injuring at least 22, including a six-week-old baby and a 14-year-old girl. The eastern Ukrainian city was struck by 48 drones, two missiles and five glider bombs as part of a huge, countrywide bombardment by Putin in retaliation for last week's Spider Web attack on his nuclear bombers. PM Sir Keir Starmer used an article in last week's Sun on Sunday to deliver his starkest warning yet of the danger of war. Putting the nation on a war footing, he said Britain must prepare to 'sight and win' against our enemies. New footage of Op Spiderweb shows drone blitzing Putin's burning aircraft 4
Sky News
4 hours ago
- Sky News
Deadly Russian strikes condemned as 'savage' - as dozens more injured in Ukrainian city
At least four people have been killed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv after a series of Russian attacks. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described one of the attacks as a "savage killing", saying dozens of people had been injured. It comes after Kyiv embarrassed Moscow when it launched a daring drone raid deep inside Russia last weekend, destroying dozens of bombers. Meanwhile, attempted US-led peace talks between the two appear to be floundering. During the attacks on Saturday, Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said: "Kharkiv is currently experiencing the most powerful attack in the entire time of the full-scale war." The first wave of the Russian strike was a large drone-and-missile attack in the early hours of Saturday morning. Nightly attacks from Moscow have become a routine part of the conflict. At least three people died and 21 others were injured. There are reports that some people remain trapped underneath the rubble. Then, in the afternoon, Russia dropped aerial bombs on the city centre, killing at least one person and wounding more. Ukraine and Russia also accused one another of trying to sabotage a planned prisoner exchange. Residents reckon with Russian strikes As emergency workers fought fires at the attack sites in Kharkiv, residents had to deal with the fallout of strikes that could have claimed their lives. Alina Belous tried to extinguish flames with buckets of water to rescue a young girl trapped inside a burning building, as she called out for help. "We were trying to put it out ourselves with our buckets, together with our neighbours," she said. "Then the rescuers arrived and started helping us put out the fire, but there was smoke and they worried that we couldn't stay there. "When the ceiling started falling off, they took us out." Vadym Ihnachenko said he initially thought it was a neighbouring building going up in flames - not his own. He was forced to flee after seeing smoke coming from his building's roof. Diplomatic efforts stall Several other areas in Ukraine were also hit, including the regions of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, and the city of Ternopil, Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiha said. Russia acknowledged the attacks, but not the deaths, saying it had targeted military sites, while pictures show apartment blocks on fire. The regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said children were among those injured in the first attack. While a US-led diplomatic push for peace has led to two rounds of direct peace talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine, they delivered no significant breakthroughs. Later on Saturday, Russia and Ukraine also accused each other of endangering plans to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action.
The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
Donald Trump was wrong – Ukraine still holds some cards
Donald Trump has been shown to be wrong, wrong and wrong again about Vladimir Putin. He was wrong again when he was asked if Ukraine's ' Spiderweb ' drone strikes against Russian bombers had changed his view of the cards the Ukrainians have: 'They gave Putin a reason to go and bomb the hell out of them,' he said. This is the same logic to which President Trump has cleaved from the start: that the Ukrainian people provoked the full-scale invasion of their country by wanting to be an independent nation facing to the west. It seemed that Mr Trump had been briefly disabused of the notion that Mr Putin wanted peace when the Russian president ignored several long telephone conversations with him and continued to bombard Ukraine, causing significant civilian casualties. ' He has gone absolutely crazy,' Mr Trump said last month. ' Needlessly killing a lot of people.' But Mr Trump responded to this month's Russian bombardment, described by the mayor of Kharkiv as the ' most powerful attack since the start of the full-scale war', by blaming the Ukrainians for giving Mr Putin a reason for intensifying the summer offensive. Any other United States president would have recognised that Mr Putin is gearing up for the summer fighting season, as Sam Kiley, our world affairs editor, reports, and would be doing so even if he had not been humiliated by Ukraine's audacious remote-control attacks on airfields thousands of miles away in different parts of Russia. Any other US president would have congratulated Volodymyr Zelensky on the attacks, which will go down in the history of special operations warfare as a brilliantly executed surprise. It turns out that when Mr Trump shamefully told Mr Zelensky in the Oval Office, ' You don't have the cards,' he was mistaken. Mr Zelensky still has the support of most of the free world. European leaders have signalled their willingness to step up whether or not Mr Trump goes through with his threat to step back from America's responsibility as a defender of freedom. The Ukrainian people remain united in their determination to defend themselves. Operation Spiderweb proved that they can take the fight deep into Russian territory, while having no territorial ambitions beyond seeking to preserve their own borders. Mr Zelensky has also exposed Mr Putin for what he really is. The Ukrainian president has given the Russian leader every chance for peace. He has been prepared to compromise on territory and alliances in a way that no leader of a sovereign nation should be asked to do. And yet Mr Putin presses on, making it abundantly clear, even to Mr Trump, that it is the Kremlin that is the obstacle to peace. Even if Mr Trump's apparent taking of sides with Mr Putin against the Ukrainian people were a cunning plan to soothe the paranoid mystical nationalism of Mr Putin and his cronies, it has not worked. Mr Putin has made it clear that he will be satisfied by nothing less than the subjugation of the whole of Ukraine by force of arms. In which case, he must be resisted. Mr Trump is right about one thing: that war is a terrible thing. But a peace built on surrender to an imperialist dictator would be no peace at all. The Ukrainian people must continue to fight, and all the nations of the world that believe in freedom, democracy and national self-determination must continue to help to defend them.
