Russia is preparing for the biggest Red Square military parade in modern history in a Soviet-style celebration marking the 65th anniversary of the USSR defeating Nazi Germany.
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Published: 8:18PM BST 28 Apr 2010
The grandiose Moscow event on May 9 will be replicated on a smaller scale in 71 cities across Russia who will hold their own military parades making it a nationwide event involving around 100,000 troops.
In Moscow, foreign soldiers, including a detachment of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards and the Central Band of the Royal Air Force, will join their Russian counterparts on Moscow's most famous square for the first time.
Foreign dignitaries and heads of state will also be present.
Military commanders, who held a rehearsal on Tuesday, have said that the Moscow parade will involve 10,000 troops, 160 military vehicles and 127 aircraft making it the biggest such parade since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
Strategic nuclear bombers, MiG and Sukhoi fighter jets, and an array of military helicopters and gunships are expected to fly over Red Square on the day, while on the ground, T-90 battle tanks, intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, and numerous air defence and artillery pieces will trundle across the cobbles.
The tradition of full-scale Red Square military parades was restored by Vladimir Putin, now prime minister, in 2008 in an attempt to project Russia's growing international confidence and influence on the world stage.
In the Soviet era, such parades were traditionally held twice a year, on May Day, and on November 7 to commemorate the 1917 Russian Revolution.
The parade takes it cues from a 1945 Soviet victory parade on Red Square during which Soviet troops tossed the defeated German army's banners, including Hitler's own personal standard, into a sodden mess at Josef Stalin's feet beneath Lenin's tomb.
Over 102,000 military servicemen across Russia will take part in festivities dedicated to the 65th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany, the Russian defense minister said on Wednesday.
"In all, more than 102,000 military servicemen will take part in the festivities. Over 10,500 servicemen will take part in the Moscow parade," Anatoly Serdyukov said in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily.
The minister added that a 1,200-member military orchestra, which also includes representatives of law enforcement bodies, will give a concert during the parade.
On May 9, 165 combat aircraft will fly over Red Square, with some of them grouping to form the number 65. Preparations for the event are coming to a head and a final rehearsal of the Victory Day flyby will take place on Thursday.
The aircraft include Tu-95MS Bear strategic bombers and supersonic Tu-160 Blackjacks, Tu-22M3 Backfire long-range bombers and Il-78 Midas aerial tankers from airbases from across Russia.
Parades to mark victory in World War II, referred to as the Great Patriotic War in former Soviet states, involve processions of personnel from all the services and a large military orchestra, followed by displays of military hardware and a fly past by combat aircraft.
The revived tradition of massive military Victory Day parades with tanks and other hardware rolling through the center of Moscow has been seen by some in the West as a sign of Russia's growing militarism, but this year the Russian troops will be joined by NATO forces, including from the United States and Britain.
Just two months ago Joe Biden was at the center of a foreign policy controversy between the Obama Regime and Israel. The announcement of a new housing project in Jerusalem while Mr. Biden was on an official visit was used as a pretext for an outrageous assault on a loyal and trusted ally by the White House. According to the Jerusalem Post.
The campaign was personally orchestrated by President Barack Obama. His Vice President Biden accused us of "endangering US lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan." Despite Prime Minister Netanyahu's abject apology, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused him of "insulting" the US. Obama's chief political advisor David Axelrod even claimed that the Israeli government was deliberately undermining peace talks.
Team Obama with the help of their fellow travelers in the MSM was able to take a minor faux pas on the part of Israel and turn it into a major story in an attempt to curry favor in the Muslim world. The Obama attack on Israel only succeeded in straining U.S. relations with our only reliable
As world leaders including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Chinese President Hu Jintao are gathering in Moscow's Red Squarehttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/2_bing.gif for the 65th anniversary of the allied victory over Nazi Germany, Joe Biden is cooling his heels in Brussels. Joe was to represent the U.S. at the ceremony, however Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally crossed V.P. Biden's name off the list. The UK Guardian tells us.
The White House is privately furious at the snub. Barack Obama told Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, he was unable to attend but had confidently offered Biden as his replacement. Moscow's diplomatic corps has been abuzz all week with news of Putin's unexpected veto.
Why such a muted response from Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Clinton? They were loud and aggressive in their response to a perceived snub of Mr. Biden by Israel, doesn't this deliberate insult to the vice president merit a similar response? Where is the MSM coverage of this story?
It looks like this is yet another curious chapter in the Obama foreign policy pay book.
Igor Tabakov / MT
Soldiers carrying banners in the Sunday, May 9, parade for Victory Day.
Yelena Jo Van Der Burgt, a Dutch citizen of Russian descent who attended Victory Day celebrations with her husband, said May 9 should become a day of reconciliation for all nations of the former Soviet Union.
“We have all fought shoulder to shoulder, not against Germany but against Nazism, so it is sad to watch how all of the common memory is stomped on,” she said.
But this call for unity rang a little hollow on Sunday, when troops from NATO countries marched on Red Square for the first time but many world leaders shirked the ceremony and one post-Soviet nation was not invited.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the only prominent European leader to attend the grandiose parade celebrating the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.
Merkel was joined by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Israeli President Shimon Peres, whose country, home to a large Russian community, also celebrates Victory Day on May 9. Other foreign dignitaries included Wojciech Jaruzelski, a war veteran and Polish president during the Communist era, and Poland's acting president, Bronislaw Komorowski.
But French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi canceled their trips to Russia, citing the economic crisis in the European Union.
U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declined invitations to attend, citing other obligations.
Some media reports suggested that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally rejected their proposals to be represented by Vice President Joe Biden and Prince Charles, respectively, because of Biden's vocal support of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Britain's refusal to extradite Russians sought by Moscow.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the allegations are “so absurd and far from reality that they require no comment,” Interfax reported Monday.
Saakashvili was not invited to the parade.
About 20 heads of state attended Sunday's festivities, a far cry from the 50, including then-U.S. President George W. Bush, who attended the 60th anniversary celebrations five years earlier, during Putin's presidency.
Meanwhile, more than 17 million Russians, including 4 million Muscovites, took part in the celebrations nationwide that concluded with a 15-minute fireworks display, police said. No serious accidents were reported.
The parade, broadcast live on state television, showed off tanks and Topol-M strategic rockets and was followed by a military air show.
Troops from four NATO member states — the United States, Britain, France and Poland — marched on Red Square for the first time as part of what observers called a token of Russian political goodwill toward former war allies.
Britain was represented by a battalion of Welsh guards who marched in traditional bearskin hats.
Foreign guests also included veterans of the Normandie-Niemen air fighter squadron, a group of French pilots who flew Soviet planes as part of the Red Air Force.
President Dmitry Medvedev praised the allies for their war efforts, including Lend-Lease programs that supplied aid to the Soviet Union, but he also said the Soviet resistance to Nazism was “unparalleled in terms of bravery and power.”
Troops from many post-Soviet countries, including Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus and Azerbaijan, also took part in the parade.
Turkmen soldiers were led by a commander on a prancing white horse with golden hooves. The horse, from the famous Akhal-Teke breed, is a descendant of the steed that Red Army commander Marshal Georgy Zhukov rode during the first Victory Day parade in June 1945, a presenter said during the television broadcast.
The presenter also reminded viewers that Meliton Kantaria, a native of Georgia, was among the three Soviet soldiers who raised the conquering force's flag atop the German parliament building in 1945.
But Georgia was not officially invited to the parade because of its 2008 war with Russia.
More than 700,000 Georgians fought in the Red Army during World War II, and 300,000 of them were killed, Georgian parliamentary speaker David Bakradze said Sunday, RIA-Novosti reported.
Medvedev did not mention the absence of Georgians in his Red Square speech, focusing instead on the overall efforts of the Soviet people.
“We will never forget the soldiers fighting on the front, the women and children working in the factories,” Medvedev said.
In an interview with Izvestia on the eve of the celebrations, Medvedev said those who place “the Red Army and the Nazi invaders” on the same level “are committing a moral crime.”
In the interview, Medvedev harshly criticized Josef Stalin, the country’s leader during World War II, saying the dictator, still a popular figure among many Russians, “committed many crimes against his own people.”
Yury Gnatyk, an 84-year-old war veteran who attended the parade with his family, did not take kindly to Medvedev’s decision to downplay Stalin's role.
“How can we say that the war was won without a commander? We all admire Kutuzov, but he abandoned Moscow to the enemy, while Stalin did not,” Gnatyk said, referring to the 19th-century Russian commander who burned Moscow in a tactical maneuver during the war with Napoleon Bonaparte's invading French army.
Gnatyk’s sentiments were echoed by another decorated war veteran, Colonel Vladimir Korzh, 85, a former military doctor. “Hitler wanted to destroy the whole country and turn us into slaves. The victory was achieved by the Communist Party and by Josef Stalin personally,” he said.
Korzh dismissed the repressions that took place during Stalin's rule as unavoidable mistakes, saying that although “some people were repressed illegally,” Stalin “acted in very difficult period.”
Those too young to remember Stalin's crimes were ambivalent about his role as the country’s leader. “Would we really have been able to achieve the victory without Stalin? It's a difficult question, and it remains to be answered,” Vladimir, 20, a Moscow student, said as he watched the veterans march past on Tverskaya Ulitsa.
Vadim, 21, who was on Tverskaya with his girlfriend during the celebrations, had found the answer for himself. “My relatives were fighting on the frontline, and I know that they were fighting for me," he said. "If I were sent to war like they were, I would fight not for Putin or Medvedev but myself and my loved ones.”
http://www.spacedaily.com/images-lg/...011-afp-lg.jpg Russian APCs drive through Red Square during the nation's Victory Day military parade in Moscow on May 9, 2011 in commemoration of the end of WWII. Russia was due Monday to march 20,000 soldiers and its most advanced missiles across Red Square in a parade marking victory in World War II and reinforcing the country's belief in its Soviet-era might. Photo courtesy AFP.
Clinton: US doesn't see China as threat Washington (AFP) May 9, 2011 - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, opening high-level talks Monday, said the United States does not see China's growth as a threat and sought greater trust to work together on global problems.
"Some in our country see China's progress as a threat to the United States; some in China worry that America seeks to constrain China's growth. We reject both those views," Clinton said.
"We both have much more to gain from cooperation than from conflict," she said.
Belarus leader names West as main foe on Victory Day Minsk (AFP) May 9, 2011 - The authoritarian leader of Belarus led his nation's Victory Day celebrations on Monday by identifying the West as the main threat facing his former Soviet state.
"Today, Belarus is being threatened from abroad. A bitter information and political war is being waged against it," President Alexander Lukashenko told a parade marking the anniversary of the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany.
"They are trying to split our society apart, filling it with fear and distrust for one another," Lukashenko said while his six-year-old son Kolya, the fruit of an extra-marital relationship, stood at his side.
The veteran Belarus leader has been ostracised by much of the international community since winning a disputed re-election last year that led to the arrest of hundreds of protesters and several top opposition candidates.
Two of those candidates have gone on trial facing charges that could leave them behind bars between three and 15 years. Several others remain in pretrial detention.
Lukashenko has previously vowed never to cede power and some analysts believe that he is grooming his illegitimate son to become president in the decades to come.
Belarus still retains a reluctant ally in its neighbour Russia and is currently negotiating a bailout loan with Moscow that Minsk hopes could help support the country's flagging currency and repair a leaking economy.
Lukashenko has previously blamed the economic crisis as well as an April metro bombing that killed 14 people in the capital Minsk on his regime's domestic and foreign foes.
He told the nation on Monday in his Victory Day address that he was "certain that we will be manage to overcome all the hardships and pass all our tests with valour."
by Staff Writers
Moscow (AFP) May 9, 2011
Some 20,000 soldiers and Russia's most advanced missiles rumbled across Red Square on Monday in a parade marking victory in World War II and reinforcing the country's belief in its Soviet-era might.
But the lustre of the annual show of force was somewhat dimmed by renewed doubts about the wisdom of staging the costly exhibition and reports that Islamists were planning to undermine the celebration by staging new attacks.
A well-rehearsed 1,500-piece orchestra set the tone to the procession by booming out festive marches as President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin watched from a podium in front of Lenin's mausoleum.
"The further these years are removed, the deeper our understanding of the heroic exploits of our military generation -- its bravery, willpower and self-sacrifice," Medvedev said in remarks broadcast live across the nation.
"You decided the fate of World War II," he told the small group of veterans in attendance. "Today we mark the holiest of our holidays and thank you for our freedom."
Medvedev and Putin -- both being watched under a political microscope with presidential elections less than a year away -- sat side by side and exchanged a few comments as soldiers goose-stepped across the polished cobblestone.
Putin did not address the gathering while Medvedev ended the hour-long ceremony by spending a few minutes shaking hands with some of Russia's most elite troops.
The 66th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany began with jets seeding the clouds around Moscow to stave off any rain and culminated in a display of the latest line of Topol-M missiles -- the pride of Russia's nuclear defences.
The Kremlin resumed the tradition of rolling out its most feared weapons for the annual event in 2008 at a time of renewed confidence that coincided with a booming economy and a sense of Russia having recaptured its global prestige.
Those parades continued through the subsequent global financial crisis and Russia's cautious recovery from it has left some wondering whether the scale of the festivities was still worth the price.
Medvedev brushed aside those sceptics as he downed an obligatory shot of vodka and shared a simple meal of buckwheat with a small group of World War II veterans on the eve of the parade.
"Parades play an enormous instructional role in our country," the Russian president noted.
Medvedev has burnished a reformist image but has had more trouble winning the trust of Russia's more nationalist forces as he ponders whether to seek re-election in polls scheduled for March.
His term has been hurt by periodic attacks from Islamists and persistent rumours that his predecessor and mentor Putin not only wielded the real power but also harboured plans to return to the Kremlin next year.
Security issues returned to the forefront in January when a suicide bomber killed 37 people at a Moscow airport.
The warlord who claimed responsibility has vowed to carry out fresh strikes in the weeks and months to come.
Police said they may have foiled one such attack over the weekend when they staged a security sweep in the previously peaceful southern city of Astrakhan. One suspected militant was killed and dozens more were arrested.
Medvedev told a post-parade reception at the Kremlin that the nature of security threats facing Russia has changed since the Great Patriotic War -- the term former Soviet republics use to refer to the 1941-45 campaign.
"Today's world still faces the threat of conflicts, the threat of international terrorism," ITAR-TASS quoted Medvedev as saying.
"Humanity can only overcome these problems jointly."
May 10th, 2011, 20:02
American Patriot
Re: Russia prepares spectacular Red Square parade
Mayday nonsense?
May 11th, 2011, 03:21
Ryan Ruck
Re: Russia prepares spectacular Red Square parade
That time of year already, huh? Snuck right up on me...
The 2019 Victory Day speech by President Vladimir Putin was as important as ever as it sent a message to the present-day states that consciously distort the events of the past. Putin reminded of the graffiti of the Brest Fortress defenders which still makes us gasp for air in its incredible oath and testament to us. As those soldiers fought until the very end, this oath was one of hope and defiance: ''I am dying but I do not surrender'' - a phrase that will now act as the title of yet another incredible, sensitive speech by Putin.
The 2019 Victory Day speech by President Vladimir Putin was as important as ever as it sent a message to the present-day states that consciously distort the events of the past. Putin reminded of the graffiti of the Brest Fortress defenders which still makes us gasp for air in its incredible oath and testament to us. As those soldiers fought until the very end, this oath was one of hope and defiance: ''I am dying but I do not surrender'' - a phrase that will now act as the title of yet another incredible, sensitive speech by Putin.
Never again will men of good will allow the Fascists to try to destroy this sacred Land and it's people! Slava, Krasnaya Armiya!
See, in Russia, this is not considered Communist or even particularly Soviet, but Russian, as if the Hitlerite invasion of 1941 brought forth a reborn Russia that had been almost put to death by the Bolsheviks and Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary in WWI.
It is the 27.6 million Russian dead killed by the Axis forces-of which Russia faced 80% of the Axis military during the Great Patriotic War-that make the Red Banner of Victory and other symbols of the war Sacred, make the Red Army of that conflict Sacred, because it was the People's War for their very existence. It was not ''Stalin'' who was the 'Man of Steel' so much as the men and women who fought from 1941 to 1945, and so I at least honor that. It was and is not in honor of the Red Dragon or the Atheistic Marxist Leninists that I or millions of others pay tribute.
