Ukraine is using a ceasefire in Donbas to strengthen its defense capacities and rearm troops, President Petro Poroshenko said on a trip to an army training center in the country's north-central Chernihiv region on Monday.

"Ukraine's victory is gained not only at the front line, but in the rear where professionals are making weapons for the Ukrainian army round-the-clock, practically in three shifts," the president said.

He said Kiev had beefed up its units with Stugna antitank missile systems on several most important directions. "We took an opportunity of this period of temporary inactivity," he said.

According to the president, the Ukrainian Ukroboronprom concern is on the list of ten top world arms exporters, but is facing a more ambitious task of hitting the list of top five.

Japan's future could be in jeopardy following an announcement in late April that Tokyo and Washington intend to deepen military ties by revising their guidelines, underpinning the US-Japanese defense alliance.

This warning was voiced by an unnamed high-ranking officer of the People's Liberation Army during a meeting with a group of senior Japanese politicians, a source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Japan Times.

"Japan will have no future if it only follows the United States," a source quoted the PLA officer, working at the China Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS), as saying.

Yemen's Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for downing Moroccan F16 fighter that Saudi-led coalition earlier declared missing. A Houthi TV channel broadcast a video that Iran-allied fighters said showed the wreckage of an F-16 plane.

"The air defence of the tribes shot down a warplane over Wadi Nushur, in Saada," Houthi news channel Al Maseera said. The channel broadcasted pictures showing local tribesmen celebrating a victory near the F-16 wreckage.

The Iran-backed Shia group claimed the Moroccan jet was downed by a surface-to-air missile in Wadi Nashour area in the northwestern province of Saada, a Houthi stronghold near the border with Saudi Arabia, while conducting airstrikes Sunday.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is planning a trip to Sochi on Tuesday, where he is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The three men are to discuss the situation in Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

The trip has been confirmed by Russian and US officials.

"This trip is part of our ongoing effort to maintain direct lines of communication with senior Russian officials and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement.

At first, a few progressive heads-of-state in Europe were appalled at U.S. President Barack Obama's pressure for them to reject Russia's invitation to an upcoming 9 May 2015 celebration of victory against Hitler, and Czech President Milos Zeman even came out publicly saying, in a conspicuous face-slap to Obama, on 3 January 2015, that the U.S. overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 had been a coup and that "only poorly informed people" were comparing that to Czechoslovakia's own "Velvet Revolution" against communism on 29 December 1989. Zeman even said that Ukraine's 22 February 2014 U.S. overthrow of Yanukovych, or the event (under the cover of public demonstrations at the) "Maidan, was not a democratic revolution" but instead a coup. Or, as the head of Stratfor, the private CIA firm, has acknowledged, it was even "the most blatant coup in history," because it was so well doumented in videos taken by bystanders at the time, as well as by internal intelligence leaks (such as this and this). So: indeed, "only poorly informed people" didn't know about it. (And some still don't.)

China's military plans to produce nearly 42,000 land-based and sea-based unmanned weapons and sensor platforms as part of its continuing, large-scale military buildup, the Pentagon's annual report on the People's Liberation Army (PLA) disclosed Friday.

China currently operates several armed and unarmed drone aircraft and is developing long-range range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for both intelligence gathering and bombing attacks.

"The acquisition and development of longer-range UAVs will increase China's ability to conduct long-range reconnaissance and strike operations," the report said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged Western countries to build a system of global security on a non-aligned basis, to abandon the phobias of the past and look forward to the future.

"As for getting rid of fear, this is an internal state of those who is scared. One needs to overcome it, make a step forward, to abandon the phobias of the past and to look forward to the future," he told a news conference following talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

I am sitting in front of my computer and watch the movie The Burn, by Arkadii Mamontov, about the May 2nd Odessa massacre. The movie is very well made and I hope that somebody will subtitle it in English. It shows a lot of video footage of various events, which all took place last year. Scenes include the intercepted telephone calls of local Ukronazi leaders, the smiling faces of the young Ukrainian girls preparing Molotov cocktails, the applause from the crowd, with the Ukronazi lynch mob approaching the square where the anti-Maidan demonstrators had their tents. Two things in particular amaze me: the absolute burning hatred of the Ukronazis for the "separy" or "colorady" (the anti-Maidan Ukrainians) and the fact they are all speaking in Russian! Not a single word is uttered by these Russia-haters, in their beloved Ukrainian language.

And I ask myself - are these Russians or not?

I suppose that it depends on your definition of Russians. For me, a Russian is any person who loves, and cares for Russia. It is not an ethnicity or a language, but a "civilizational realm", just like there are Indian or Chinese civilizational realms. By those criterions, these Ukronazis are not Russians.

In that logic, history is literally irrelevant.

Let's imagine an imaginary people who lived for 5000 years on an island with no contact with the outside world. And yet, one day, some of them, for whatever reason, decide to declare that they are a totally different nation, with nothing in common with the rest of the islanders. They invent themselves a language, a history and some ersatz of a culture. It is all utter nonsense, of course, and any historical investigation will reveal this fraud. But even if all their founding myths completely contradict the historical record, even if their language is completely artificial and invented, and even if their entire claim to a separate identity is based on nothing, nothing at all, there is one thing which cannot be impugned, one thing which is undeniably real: their seething hatred for their own people, culture and history. That hatred by itself does not need to be based on anything, it can appear ex nihilo and no amount of logical demonstrations will weaken it.

Washington is losing its weight in the international arena and this makes it target Russia and Venezuela, as well as attempt to curtail China's growth, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro told RT's Spanish-language channel in an exclusive interview.

In March, the US declared Venezuela a threat to its national security which is usually the first step in starting a US sanctions program. Maduro said the country found great support in Latin America after this attack, which forced Washington to backpedal on its pressure.

"All those countries stood against it even before the Summit of Americas started exactly a month ago and demanded that [US President] Barack Obama repeal the executive order that declared Venezuela a threat. It was very convincing," he said. "President Obama realized that Venezuela was not alone, that it would have help and support. We were united in our multiplicity."

The Venezuelan president, who continued a policy of opposing the influence of the US in Latin America that his predecessor Hugo Chavez started, believes that Washington is unnerved by the growth of political and economic power in countries it does not control.

"The US see they are losing influence and it makes them target countries like Russia to find a way to stop them. The US creates barriers and problems for such countries. They try to hamper their natural development. So they continue their attacks on peaceful countries like Venezuela and oppose the development of powerful nations like China," he said.

Seventy years ago, the Soviet Union crushed Nazism in Europe. Millions died in the struggle. Today, the civilized world joined together in Moscow in celebrating the victory over fascist pathocracy. The leaders of the West did not attend. The reason is simple. Nazism may have been defeated in Germany, but it has lived on ever since in the United States, and it has made a recent resurgence in Ukraine. To attend such a celebration would be an unthinkable violation of fascistic, psychopathic Western values.

So with that said, here's a run-down of some of the highlights from the parade. First of all, the parade itself: