NATO TROOPS TO JOIN RED SQUARE PARADE IN RUSSIA

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's troops will march across Red Square on Sunday as Russia marks the 65th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany.

Reuters reports that the parade is a gesture of friendship to the West which has won praise from President Barack Obama but enraged Communists.

Foreign leaders including President Hu Jintao of China and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will watch as over 11,000 troops from World War Two victors Russia, the United States, Britain and France parade to the sound of a huge military band.

Russia's Communists, still the country's biggest opposition party, pledged to hold a protest march in central Moscow after the parade.

They will chant slogans against NATO forces for marching over a hallowed square which is also home to the embalmed body of their revolutionary hero, Vladimir Lenin.

'Foreign troops have never appeared on Red Square. It's a violation of tradition,' said Sergei Obukhov, a member of the party's Central Committee.

'The presence of foreign troops with weapons in their hands is an unnecessary reminder that we lost the Cold War,' Obukhov said.