Serbia Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Vladimir Putin and Russia's Night Wolves

This afternoon Russian President Vladimir Putin stepped off his plane in Belgrade to a red carpet reception, arriving in Serbia's capital as a star guest at the first military parade to be held in the country for nearly three decades.

Putin was greeted with a traditional Slavic three-cheek kiss from his Serbian counterpart, Tomislav Nikolic, a former extreme nationalist and ally of ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The Kremlin leader then stood solemnly as a guard of honor stood to attention in celebration of his arrival.

Held in commemoration of Belgrade's liberation from Nazi occupation 70 years ago by Yugoslav Partisans and Red Army, the military bonanza attracted large crowds of people from across the country. It featured more than 3,000 soldiers, fighter jets, tanks, cannons, and a Russian aerobatic team.

Souvenir stalls in the capital sold Putin-themed T-shirts, fridge magnets, and badges to commemorate the event, while billboards were plastered with posters featuring the Russian leader's face and the slogan: "Our President."

Large crowds waved Russian and Serbian flags, cheering as the military vehicles rumbled down the streets and jets roared overhead. Many more celebrated at Belgrade Fortress, an ancient citadel overlooking the city.

"It's just like the time of Tito," Nikola Gizodovski, a 32-year-old hotel manager attending the celebrations, told VICE News — a reference to the personality cult that surrounded Yugoslavia's Socialist-era leader.

Another reveler at the event, 75-year-old pensioner Gordana Milatovic, reminisced fondly about her youth and described Putin as a strong man. "[He is the] type that a woman wants and a country needs, firm, fair and respected," she told VICE News.

The display of pomp and obvious affection for Putin in Serbia, a country aspiring to join the European Union, will undoubtedly irk the west. Western relations with Russia have fallen apart over the Ukraine crisis and are now at their lowest ebb since the Cold War.

Serbia has made surprising and controversial concessions in a bid to advance its membership for the European Union — including on its north Kosovo enclaves, under the leadership of Prime Minister Aleksander Vucic. Vucic was a former right-hand man to Milosevic and reportedly said in 1995 that Serbia would kill 100 Muslims for every dead Serb.

But the Balkan state, which is unlikely to join the European bloc until 2020 at the earliest, has stopped short of accepting its southern neighbor's widely recognized claim to statehood — a declaration made by Kosovo in 2008 with the west's backing, following the conclusion of a brutal war led by the Milosevic regime.

Officials in Belgrade have also refused to join the west in sanctioning Russia to exert financial pressure on Moscow to halt its involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

It's time to assign blame for everything that happened in Ukraine. Read more here.

"Serbia will not compromise its morals with any kind of bad behavior towards Russia," Vucic said today as he and Putin laid wreaths at a memorial to 31,000 Soviet soldiers killed in the 1944 battles to liberate Belgrade.

Russia's leader, who said his country's friendship "was not for sale," offered $1 billion in investment in the Serbia's beleaguered energy provider, Gazprom-owned NIS. Putin also emphasized the opportunity for Serbian exporters to make the most of opportunities on the Russian market after Moscow banned western food imports in a tit-for-tat sanction war.

The Kremlin leader also squeezed in an opportunity to jibe the west over the Ukraine crisis. Speaking to a Serbian media outlet the day before the military parade in Belgrade, Putin accused of Washington of "hostility" and drew on the rhetoric of "fascist Europe," a cornerstone of the Moscow's propaganda against the west in the Ukraine conflict.

"Unfortunately, the vaccine against the Nazi virus, developed at the Nuremberg trials, is losing its effectiveness in some European countries. A clear sign of this trend is open manifestations of neo-Nazism, which have become common in Latvia and other Baltic states," Russia's leader told daily newspaper, Politika on Wednesday.

At a press conference on parade day itself, however, both countries leaders offered assurances that they believed Serbia's future lay with Europe. "Serbia is on its European path, and we will not give up on that path," Vucic told a crowded room of journalists.

The unsavory array of guests at today's parade, however, is unlikely to have done much to assure the west. Among the event's VIP attendees were Momcilo Perisic and Dragoljub Ojdanic, both convicted but later acquitted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Other visitors to Serbia's capital included the ferocious-looking Moscow top dogs of notorious motorbike gang Night Wolves, who were photographed posing with Russia's ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Chepurin, in the Belgrade embassy just hours before the parade began.

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— Ambasada Rusije (@AmbasadaRusije)October 16, 2014

The tattooed Harley Davidson hard men — with whom Putin regularly dons sunglasses and a leather jacket to ride with — have branches across the Slavic world, including Serbia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. The Night Wolves were instrumental in the illegal annexation of Crimea where the Ukrainian branch of the bikers set up and manned checkpoints during Russia's covert military invasion of the southern peninsula.

The parade and Putin's visit also coincided with an unrelated flare-up of ethnic tensions in the Balkan region. On Tuesday a soccer match between Serbia and Albania in capital was brought to a premature end after a drone flying a nationalist "Greater Albania" insignia flag flew over the pitch triggering a mass brawl of flare throwing and punches, involving both players and fans.

Video shows fans brawling on field with Albanian and Serbian soccer team. Read more here.

The Albanian Football Association has accused Serbian police officers, supporters, security officials of attacking a bus transporting the national team's players with stones and concrete slabs as it left the Partizan soccer arena in the capital.

Follow Harriet Salem on Twitter: @HarrietSalem