According to Kremlin press service on Sunday, the Russian president congratulated the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and citizens of Georgia and Ukraine, saying that the V-Day is a sacred celebration that will always remain the symbol of "heroism and unity of those nations who rose up to fight for their fatherland and saved the world from fascism."
Russian soldiers march at the Red Square during the Victory Day military parade general rehearsal in Moscow, on May 7, 2016
“Our common duty is to carefully preserve the memory about those who died in the Great Patriotic War and to care about veterans in every possible way,” Putin further said.
Victorious Soviet soldiers in Berlin
He also expressed hope that friendship and brotherhood would continue to serve as a foundation for strengthening the relations among countries within the Eurasian continent.
The term Great Patriotic War is used in Russia and most other former republics of the Soviet Union to describe the war fought from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 along the fronts of the Eastern Front of the World War II between the Soviet Union’s Red Army and Nazi Germany. However, the term is not used by the states who later joined NATO.
Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel is signing the ratified surrender terms for the German military, on May 8, 1945
Total and unconditional surrender of the Nazi war machine was declared in the late evening of May 8 (after midnight, thus on May 9, Moscow Time), when the ratified surrender terms for the German military was signed by German Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.
S/SH 11