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Russia Recalls WWII Nazi Defeat
President Vladimir Putin, marking Wednesday's 56th anniversary of the Nazi defeat, warned that no nation should pursue its own security at the expense of others, an apparent chastisement of the United States and its missile defense plans.
Putin's statement came as World War II veterans, bent and shuffling with age but proudly draped in medals, gathered at commemorations throughout Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The holiday known as Victory Day is one of the most solemn and resonant in the former Soviet Union, which lost some 27 million people in the war.
``We remember the ravaged towns and the burnt-down villages, the ruin of treasures of national culture, everything that we lost in those years,'' Putin said in a speech in Red Square. ``Today, the first time we look on this victory from a new century, its significance only grows.''
``The war's lessons are what we need today. Those lessons teach us to find balance between force and reason ... no one has the right to forget this,'' he said. ``The entire experience of the postwar history shows it is impossible to build a safe world for oneself alone and, still less, at the detriment of others.''
The statement appeared directed at the United States' plans to build a national missile defense system, which Washington says it needs to protect against attacks by small ``rogue'' nations, but which Russia says will wreck the foundations of global security and provoke a new arms race.
Hundreds of veterans joined Putin in the Red Square reviewing stands.
About 5,000 troops ¡ª including some returning from service in hot spots including Chechnya ¡ª and military cadets marched straight-legged in dress uniforms, as a 600-piece military band played martial tunes and drummers beat out a rapid tempo.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov rode past the troops standing in a silver-blue ZiL convertible, stopping several times to greet the troops. Ivanov wore a business suit, reflecting his status as a civilian defense minister ¡ª a switch from the Soviet and Russian practice of giving the job to generals.
Several thousand Communists and others nostalgic for the Soviet Union marched to a rally in front of the former KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, some carrying portraits of wartime dictator Josef Stalin. Veterans gathered in Moscow parks to dance, drink shots of vodka and eat boiled barley scooped out of huge cauldrons as they did at the front during World War II.
In the Ukrainian capital Kiev, veterans marched down the city's main street, joined by children and grandchildren. Thousands of the veterans chose to march under red Soviet banners in groups organized by the Communist Party and other hard-line movements.
Many veterans walked with obvious difficulty and leaned heavily on canes, but still managed to raise their hands to salute onlookers.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko marched at the head of a commemoration parade in the capital Minsk.
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