Russian parliament speaker to visit China, Vedomosti says

MOSCOW, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin is due to visit China this week as head of a parliamentary delegation, the Vedomosti newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified sources.

Volodin will visit Beijing and Changchun, the newspaper said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to visit China at the end of August and early September for celebrations marking the end of World War Two in China.

Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender came into force in Europe on May 8, 1945 but in Moscow it was already May 9, which became the Soviet Union's "Victory Day" in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War Two.

In Asia, World War Two ended on Sept. 2 with the surrender of Japan after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Chinese Communist Party historians say China's casualties in the 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War were 35 million.

The Japanese occupation caused the displacement of as many as 100 million Chinese people and significant economic hardship, as well as the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, during which an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 victims were killed.