MOSCOW — Hundreds of aging veterans joined Russian President Vladimir Putin on Red Square on Wednesday for the Victory Day parade, the center of an anniversary most Russians still revere 56 years after the Nazi defeat.
Some 5,000 troops — including some returning from service in hot spots including Chechnya — and military cadets marched straight-legged in dress uniforms, as a 600-piece military band played martial tunes and drummers beat out a rapid tempo. A banner on the huge GUM department store running along one side of Red Square read "USSR — Victory!"
"Today, the first time we look on this victory from a new century, its significance only grows," Putin said, standing before the red marble mausoleum where Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin lies in state. "It gave us the opportunity to live in peace and do creative work and made our state independent and proud."
It was the first year that veterans of World War II did not march, because the government feared most were too old and infirm. Instead, they stood along one side of Red Square, jackets sagging with medals.
Several thousand Communists and others nostalgic for the Soviet Union marched to a rally in front of the former KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, some carrying portraits of wartime dictator Josef Stalin. Veterans gathered in Moscow parks to dance, drink shots of vodka and eat boiled barley scooped out of huge cauldrons as they did at the front during World War II.
In St. Petersburg, 82-year-old Valentin Dremlyug was given a U.S. commendation for humanitarian service. Dremlyug helped rescue more than 120 American and British seamen who were on an Allied convoy carrying supplies to the Soviet Union through the icy Barents Sea in July 1942 when German submarines and bombers attacked.
The former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belarus — which saw some of the worst fighting in the war — also marked the day with marches. In the Ukrainian capital Kiev, veterans marched with children and grandchildren, many leaning on canes but still managing to raise their hands in salute to the onlookers.
The Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 million people in WWII.