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Kyrgyz president rules to hold WWII victory parade on May 9

Earlier, an advisor of the Kyrgyz president, Farid Niyazov, told a news conference that this year the victory parade would be held on May 7 instead of May 9

BISHKEK, April 27. /TASS/ Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev has signed a decree on a military parade devoted to the 70th anniversary of victory in WWII. The victory parade will be held in the Kyrgyz capital on May 9, the Kyrgyz president said in the decree, TASS reported Monday, citing a source from the political information department of the administration of the Kyrgyz president. In accordance with the presidential decree Chief of Kyrgyz General Staff Asanbek Alymkozhayev will command the parade.

On Friday, an advisor of the Kyrgyz president, Farid Niyazov, told a news conference that this year the victory parade would be held on May 7 instead of May 9. "The date set for the parade was practically settled although no official resolution has been made yet," the advisor said then. He explained that the date had to be changed for a number of reasons; one of them was that many events had been scheduled for the war veterans and that it would be difficult for them to attend all of them. Another reason was that the military leadership of Kyrgyzstan had asked the Kyrgyz president that he should command the parade himself. But, President Almazbek Atambayev has accepted an invitation from Russia to take part in the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of victory in WWII in Moscow on May 9.

More than 360,000 Kyrgyz citizens were mobilized to WWII war fronts; every third Kyrgyz serviceman was killed in action. The servicemen from the former Soviet Kyrgyzstan and neighboring Kazakhstan were deployed in the legendary Panfilov division, which heroically defended Moscow in winter 1941-1942, which was of crucial importance for the victory in WWII.

Barely a thousand WWII veterans survived in Kyrgyzstan to see the 70th anniversary of the great victory in WWII.