Putin invoked the Soviet victory in World War II to rally his army in Ukraine, saying ‘our heroes move forward’.
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Russia has held its annual Victory Day military parade in Moscow to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany during the second world war.
The parade, scaled back this year due to security concerns, started at about 10am (07:00 GMT) in Red Square, with a military formation bearing the Russian flag.
Security was tight as President Vladimir Putin spoke at the event, viewed as Russia’s most significant secular holiday.
“Victory has always been and will be ours,” said Putin, as columns of troops lined up on the square. “The key to success is our moral strength, courage and valour, our unity and ability to endure anything and overcome any challenge.”
Putin, in power for more than a quarter-century, has regularly used Victory Day to showcase the country’s military might and rally support for his war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year. But this year, for the first time in nearly 20 years, the parade took place without tanks, missiles and other heavy weapons, aside from a traditional flyover of combat jets.
Instead, the 45-minute parade showed a video of Russian military equipment deployed to Ukraine, said Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow. She said there is an understanding that “tanks are needed at the [military] front, not at the parade”.
Officials said the event’s change of format was due to the “current operational situation” and pointed to the threat of Ukrainian attacks. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the authorities have taken “additional security measures”.
United States President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to his request for a ceasefire running from Saturday through Monday and an exchange of prisoners, declaring that the break in fighting could be the “beginning of the end” of the war.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said earlier this week that the Russian authorities “fear drones may buzz over Red Square” on May 9, followed up on Trump’s statement by issuing a decree mockingly permitting Russia to hold its Victory Day celebrations on Saturday, declaring Red Square temporarily off-limits for Ukrainian strikes.
Peskov shrugged off Zelenskyy’s decree as a “silly joke.” Russian authorities warned that if Ukraine attempted to disrupt Saturday’s festivities, Russia would carry out a “massive missile strike on the center of Kyiv”.
In Putin’s address to the parade, attended by Russian military units as well as soldiers from North Korea, the Russian president invoked the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany to rally support for his army in Ukraine.
“The great feat of the generation of victors inspires the soldiers carrying out the goals of the special military operation today,” Putin said. “They are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc. And despite this, our heroes move forward.
“I firmly believe that our cause is just,” he later said.
Victory Day is also observed in other former Soviet states such as Belarus and Kazakhstan. The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in 1941-45 in what it calls the Great Patriotic War, an enormous sacrifice that left a deep scar in the national psyche and remains a rare point of consensus in the nation’s divisive history under communist rule.
“We celebrate it with feelings of pride and love for our country, with understanding of our shared duty to defend the interests and future of our Motherland,” said Putin.
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