https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4x_OmqGs40&feature=youtu.be&t=12m5s
Posted on 05/09/2015 8:14:47 PM PDT by WhiskeyX
A huge military parade has been held in the Russian capital, Moscow, to commemorate 70 years since victory over Nazi Germany by Allied forces.
Some 16,000 troops took part in the Victory Day parade in Red Square with President Vladimir Putin, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other top officials, both Russian and foreign, in attendance.
Addressing the gathering, Putin thanked the Allies for their contributions to the victory, singling out France, Britain, and the United States.
Putin said "our grandfathers lived through horrible suffering."
He criticized the "folly" of creating a "unipolar" world, an apparent swipe at the United States.
High-tech military equipment was on display, including the Armata T-14, the country's first new battle tank to be deployed in 40 years.
Russian servicemen march during the Victory Day parade on Red Square. Russian servicemen march during the Victory Day parade on Red Square.
Russian servicemen march during the Victory Day parade on Red Square.
More than 20 world leaders attended, including Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Putin took special note in his speech of China's role in the war, saying that like the Soviet Union "it lost many, many millions of people."
In a sign of closer ties between Russia and China, a column of Chinese troops took part in the events.
Cuban leader Raul Castro and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe were also on hand.
But Western leaders boycotted the event in Moscow in protest over Russian actions in Ukraine.
Russia denies accusations by the West that it is arming separatists in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
More than 6,100 people have been killed in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Putin later led a rally, known as the Immortal Regiment march, with people holding pictures of relatives who fought during the war.
Police said more than 500,000 people joined the rally through Red Square in one of the largest turnouts in the country's recent history.
Afterwards, Putin met at the Kremlin with visiting Czech President Milos Zeman, one of a handful of Western leaders in Moscow for the festivities though he did not attend the military parade.
Putin praised Zeman for what he called the Czech leader's "independent position."
Zeman's trip to Moscow on May 9 was stirred controversy at home.
Analysts say the military parade in Moscow is a show of strength by Putin, who denounced as "absurd" Western sanctions imposed on Russia after it annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine last year.
Smaller parades in 25 other cities will involve 25,000 soldiers and even nuclear submarines, according to the Defense Ministry.
The Soviet Union lost an estimated 26 million people in the war, more than any other country.
Over 70 percent of Russians say a close family member was killed or went missing during the war.
Putin has increasingly used the annual celebrations to enhance his portrayal of his nation as a strong country that saved the world from Nazi aggression and now stands firm against a global threat from a bellicose United States that, in his depiction, is bent on domination.
In Minsk, U.S. servicemen marched together with Russian soldiers in the Victory Day parade in the Belarusian capital.
Opening the May 9 parade, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said it was "deeply symbolic" that representatives of the U.S. and Russian armed forces were taking part.
Forty members of the U.S. Air Force band were among more than 5,000 troops in the parade.
The show of Allied unity in Minsk was in sharp contrast to the military parade in Moscow, which was shunned by the United States and most European countries because of Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict.
Lukashenka, a close ally of Putin, had surprisingly announced that he also would not go to Moscow for the Victory Day parade.
Belarus has close ties with Russia, but Lukashenka has tried recently to serve as a bridge to the West by hosting Ukraine peace talks.
Naturally a certain high-office-occupant (islamo-)Nazi isn’t there to commemorate our victory over the Nazis. Figures.
He’s in mourning.
Without a doubt.
Steven Segal was sitting in the “Invited VIPS” Audience section, in Red Square
On the “Islamo-Nazi” not attending; I think you are correct. While the U.S. and others may disagree with Russia on other issues, WWII, even after 70 years, is important over in Europe. I base my opinion with feedback from the many tourists I meet from Europe, both from the East as well as the West. Participation in Belarus wasn’t a bad idea, though. Didn’t see much about it in the news over here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4x_OmqGs40&feature=youtu.be&t=12m5s
Be fair. Obamas grandfather was in the Red Army I think. I know that because Obama said he with the unit that liberated Auschwitz./
I cannot wait until our idiot in chief, who pretends to be educated, is gone.
Did they get that new tank to run so it could be in the parade?
“We have a turban engine like the Americans.”
“No.....turbine engine......turbine......that’s what the Americans have.”
“Damnit! I should have known a head wrap wouldn’t work.”
His socalled education consisted of memorizing Koran and then the communist manifesto with some Saul Alinsky added for a little sick humor. He knows nothing about America, Christianity, Judaism, the constitution ( no please don’t remind me) or the fundamental morality most Americans wish to see restored in what used to be our government. You couldn’t find a worse fit for the job requirements.
bump
Putin brought back May Day Parades and a lot of the trappings of the Soviet Empire... the “glory days”
Of course at the time of the fall of Berlin the Soviet armies were the overwhelming dominant military force in Europe but that equation entirely reversed only a few months later with the detonation of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Now the balance of power (assuming the production of a few more bombs by the United States) was entirely in favor of the United States who were in exclusive possession of that weapon until the Soviets exploded their version in 1949. During this window no attempt was made to bring the Soviets to account for their war crimes, indeed, no intent was made to free the slaves and satellite states of Eastern Europe who came under Soviet occupation.
At the time of the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, no attempt was made to bring the communist regime in German Democratic Republic to the bar of justice for their crimes. At the time of the fall of the Soviet Union no such effort was made.
There is undeniably a double standard when it comes to the crimes of the left as opposed to the crimes of the right.
The victory of the Soviets of The Great Patriotic War was not a victory of a lesser evil over a greater evil but of one kind of evil over an another kind of evil.
Hillary?
The only people ever held “Accountable” in the GDR were Honecker, and a few other top GDR leaders.
They were not held accountable for Crimes like the mass murders in the NKVD “special Camps, or the later crimes of the Stasi, but for the killings of those attempting to escape from the GDR to the west, across the Berlin Wall.
And even then, Honecker managed to avoid penalty in the end for “health Reasons”.
I wonder if the ruskies ever fixed their busted tank. Nothing like a shiny new multimillion dollar piece of equipment crapping out just driving down the street. Imagine the disaster if it actually gets hit.
Even worse, communists were incorporated by way of the green movement into the governing of the unified Germany and European Union. I am exposed to neighbors who see Uncle Sam as the Great Satan but are apparently incapable of recognizing any evil on the left.
The conspiratorial paranoia here in Germany against international financiers (read Jews) is growing daily yet the bigotry is so primitive and ill-informed that they have never even heard of George Soros. But God help the fool who publicly denies the Holocaust in Austria.
Read the horror stories of the Mark 1 M-1’s....
There were several copies (9, I think) of each series of the Armata platform. The IFV/AFV version is HUGE, it seems.
Putin and Xi Jinping were laughing their asses off with each other at one point during the parade.
I couldn’t tell, but it looked like someone told an Obama joke.
I can definitely see that happening
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