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Indian PM joins world at V-Day parade
World leaders moved to Red Square, venue for grand military parade.
PM Manmohan Singh joined leaders from all over the world on Monday to mourn the Soviet World War II dead and to mark the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.
Heads of 56 states and their spouses joined Russian President Vladimir Putin and scores of war veterans to watch a military parade in the historic Red Square before paying tribute at the Tomb on the Unknown Soldier.
The Indian Prime Minister was a special invitee to the mammoth event though the country's forces did not play a direct role in the Soviet Union's defiant campaign against the Nazi forces that had invaded vast swathes of the erstwhile communist country and marched till the outskirts of Moscow.
Despite a diplomatic spat over the war's legacy, Putin sat flanked by US President George Bush, who angered Russians by referring earlier to the Soviet "occupation" of Eastern Europe after World War II.
Manmohan Singh sat a short distance away, in the front row of a stage for world leaders near Lenin's tomb under the walls of the Kremlin.
Among others attending the ceremony are President Hu Jintao of China and Jacques Chirac of France and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
Some 40 million people were killed or died during War II, which ended in Europe May 8, 1945. The Soviet losses itself totaled 27 million dead.
In his speech, Putin said, "Sixty years have now passed. But every year, on May 9, the memory of the war appeals to our reason, committing us to great responsibility and making us realise with more acuteness just how close the world came at that time to plunging into an irreversible abyss.
"On this day we see more clearly just what monstrous consequences violence, racial intolerance, genocide and outrage committed against people could have had."
And obviously referring to Russia's battle with terrorism in Chechnya, Putin said, "The lessons of the war send us the warning that indifference, temporising and playing accomplice to violence inevitably lead to terrible tragedies on a planetary scale. Faced with the real threat of terrorism today, we must, therefore, remain faithful to the memory of our fathers.
"It is our duty to defend a world order based on security and justice and on a new culture of relations among nations that will not allow a repeat of any war, neither 'cold' nor 'hot'."
The hour-long parade began at 10 a.m. after Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov and Russian Army chief inspected the marching contingents.
Some of the units wearing World War II-era uniforms marched past the leaders from the State Historical Museum at one end of the Red Square to the onion-domed St Basil's Church.
The leaders rose to applaud as dozens of vintage trucks carried scores of World War II veterans, both men and women, waving red carnations.
Though the skies over Moscow were dark and overcast when the leaders arrived at the main entrance to the Kremlin to be greeted by Putin and his wife Lyudmila, the Red Square was bathed in bright sunshine by the time the parade ended with a fly past by Sukhoi jets.
The leaders paid tribute to the seven million Russian military personnel killed during what Moscow terms the Great Patriotic War by laying a huge wreath of roses at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside the Red Square.
Like other leaders, Manmohan Singh laid red carnations at the memorial to the war dead.
The Russian government made tight security arrangements for the event. The city centre was closed since Sunday and Moscow residents were asked to witness the Victory Day on television.
City streets were guarded by thousands of policemen, and barriers were erected across the city.
Several ageing veterans of the Russian armed forces, turned out smartly in military uniforms adorned with glittering medals, were in the select audience that gathered to watch the parade at the Red Square.
Putin later hosted a lunch for the world leaders at the Kremlin Palace.
