Vassili Ivanov took his seat in Red Square alone, but flushed with pride.
”No country in the world could have withstood the Nazis had it not been for Russia,” he said later, thumbing a chest full of medals. ”It was wonderful. Chirac, Schröder, Putin, they all walked past me.”
Ivanov, now 79, was 16 when he fought as a guerrilla against the Nazi occupation of his home Smolensk region, sabotaging trainloads of arms, supplies and troops. His two brothers were killed fighting in the war, and his wife died a year ago. ”I am alone,” he said.
That solitude was momentarily lifted on Monday when Ivanov joined 1 500 other World War II veterans in Red Square for a Kremlin victory parade as extravagant as it was elaborate, on the 60th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany.
Conjuring up a massive display of military might and discipline reminiscent of the Brezhnev era, President Vladimir Putin hosted more than 50 world leaders for a tribute to those involved in a war that claimed more than 27-million Soviet lives.
At first, it appeared a light rain would do the unthinkable to the parade, as Putin greeted dignitaries under the cover of black umbrellas. A playful United States President George Bush brandished his like a firearm at photographers, before using it to give a polite prod to the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yushchenko.
Putin told the waiting parade that the world owed ”great human thanks” to Russia’s war dead.
”Grief came to every home, every family,” he said. ”I bow low before all veterans of the Great Patriotic War.”
The parade began with four goose-stepping soldiers, the green and gold of their uniforms muted by the grey clouds above, bearing a red hammer and sickle flag — a replica of that flown above the Reichstag after it was captured by the Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov on May 1 1945.
First on to the square were orderly columns of thousands of Russian troops in the green tunics and olive caps of their Soviet predecessors, many driving huge plastic replicas of the artillery pieces used in the war. Then followed 2 600 veterans, their grey hair blowing as they moved across the cobbled square in 130 models of Soviet-era Zis-5 vehicles.
There were echoes of Stalin’s 1945 victory parade throughout. Putin and his guests, like Stalin, sat before Lenin’s mausoleum on Red Square, obscuring the Bolshevik leader. The veterans’ trucks each bore the flag of the wartime front at which they had served and appeared in the same order as they had done 60 years earlier.
There then followed in impeccable lines the veterans of Afghanistan and the two Chechen wars of the last decade, before nine fighter jets swooped down over the parade leaving a trail of red, white and blue smoke.
Putin, strolling confidently alongside a grinning Bush, then led the world leaders towards the tomb of the unknown soldier, where they laid a wreath.
Putin posed for photographers with a mixed cast of guests including Bush, Hu Jintao of China, most major European leaders, and Islam Karimov, the dictator of Uzbekistan.
Critics have accused Putin of using the anniversary to boost his faltering domestic popularity with a show of international statesmanship.
Tight security, needed because of the domestic attacks caused by the Chechen conflict, smothered the city. Some residents were left infuriated as the streets in the centre of the capital were shut off.
”This is the people’s holiday and you won’t even let us on to the square,” Galina shouted at a policeman blocking the en trance to Teatralnaya Square, near the Kremlin. ”It’s all for Bush, and nothing for us.”
Some veterans were also saddened at being excluded from the event. Vassili Khokhokin (79) who was liberating Prague 60 years ago on Monday, said: ”We need things like this to educate the young of this country.”
”I tried to get on to the square yesterday, but it was impossible.” – Guardian Unlimited Â