Victory Day celebrated in Russia

The Russian President Vladimir Putin has paid tribute to the huge wartime sacrifice of the Soviet Union as Russia held a lavish military parade marking the 60th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. The gathering in Moscow's Red Square on Monday was attended by dozens of world leaders. Putin, flanked by US president George Bush, French president Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said that his country would never forget the debt owed to the tens of millions of its citizens who died to defeat Nazism. "I bow low before all veterans of the Great Patriotic War,'' said the Russian leader, describing "Victory Day" as "a day of victory of good over evil.'' The ceremony, full of Soviet imagery, began with four goose-stepping soldiers dressed in ceremonial green and gold embroidered uniforms carrying a red flag with a hammer and sickle. This was a replica of the banner of the Red Army's 150th Rifle Division, which was flown from the top of the Reichstag in Berlin after the building was seized in 1945.