Publicité
Russian marks wartime victory with parade
Par
Partager cet article
Russian marks wartime victory with parade
Russia marked World War Two victory yesterday with an outpouring of patriotic pride for its huge wartime role and Red Square military parades that ignored tensions in relations with its neighbours. President Vladimir Putin stood shoulder to shoulder with US President George W. Bush as military units and war veterans marched or drove across the cobbled square ? once the scene of Cold War displays of Soviet military power ? to the strains of stirring martial music.
Putin, for whom the ceremony was a rare high point after a difficult period marked by faltering ties with Washington and ex-Soviet allies, declared that the world owed ?great human thanks? to the nearly 27 million Soviet citizens who died. While paying tribute to the US, British and French allies, he said the cruellest fighting had taken place on Soviet soil. ?Grief came to every home, every family,? he said, in a ringing speech. Russian security forces threw a tight security cordon around the city centre and sealed off the Kremlin area and Red Square to non-participants for fear of attacks by Chechen rebels. World leaders, who later laid lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the foot of the red-brick walls of the Kremlin, included France?s Jacques Chirac and China?s Hu Jintao. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi represented the vanquished nations.
Bush and others watched proceedings from in front of the Lenin mausoleum, from where dictator Josef Stalin took the salute from victorious Soviet troops 60 years ago.
The patriotic atmosphere was redolent with memories of the Soviet past as Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov took the salute from the armed forces addressing them as ?tovarishchi? ? the now-defunct Soviet word for ?comrades?. Grey-haired war veterans, their breasts heavy with war medals and decorations and many observing their last Victory Day, were driven by Putin and Bush in old World War Two open trucks, waving bunches of red carnations.
<B>Richard BALMFORTH</B>
Publicité
Publicité
Les plus récents
