MOSCOW, June 24. /TASS/. The future of the world cannot be imagined, if the Red Army had not defended it, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during the Victory Parade on Moscow’s Red Square on Wednesday.
"It is impossible even to imagine what would have become with the world, if the Red Army had not come to its defense," the head of state said.
"Its soldiers [the soldiers of the Red Army] needed neither the war nor other countries, nor glory, nor honors. They strove to crush the enemy, achieve the victory and return home. And they paid an irretrievable price for the freedom of Europe," Putin stressed.
The Russian president stated that it is important to remember that the Soviet people had borne the brunt of the struggle against Nazism. "Many hundreds of thousands of soldiers fell in a foreign land and it is our duty to remember this and remember that the Soviet people bore the brunt of the struggle against Nazism," Putin said.
"In 1945, over 80% of the armed forces of Germany and its satellite states were concentrated against the USSR but this ruthless armada turned out to be powerless before the unity of Soviet citizens," Putin pointed out.
"It was our people that defeated the terrible, total evil," the Russian leader stressed.
As the Russian president recalled, the Soviet people "crushed over 600 enemy divisions, destroyed 75% of the total number of enemy aircraft, tanks and artillery guns and made its heroic, righteous and boundlessly sacrificial way to the end, to the victorious point."
"This is the main, honest and the unbiased truth about the war. We must take care of it and safeguard it, pass it on to our children, grandsons and great grandsons," Putin said.
"We will always remember that the Soviet people crushed Nazism," the Russian president said.
As Putin emphasized, these were "millions of people of various nationalities from all the republics of the Soviet Union." "Both on the front and in the rear, in guerilla detachments and in the underground, they fought and worked under the laws of courage and unity, defending their land and continuing their struggle," he said.
"They liberated European states from the invaders and put an end to the terrible tragedy of Holocaust and saved the people of Germany from Nazism, from its fatal ideology," the Russian leader said.
As the Russian leader noted, "today’s military parade honors this sacred truth, honors the outstanding generation of victors who shaped the outcome of the entire world war."