MOSCOW, May 9. /TASS/. Donbass militiamen are fighting together with Russian servicemen on their land where their ancestors routed the enemy, Russian President Vladimir Putin said before the commencement of the Victory Parade on Moscow’s Red Square on Monday.

"Today, Donbass militia fighters together with Russian army combatants are fighting on their land where the squads of Svyatoslav and Vladimir Monomakh, soldiers of Rumyantsev and Potyomkin, Suvorov and Brusilov routed the enemy, where heroes of the Great Patriotic War Nikolai Vatutin, Sidor Kovpak and Lyudmila Pavlichenko fought to the bitter end," the Russian leader said.

"I am now addressing our armed forces and Donbass militia fighters. You are fighting for the Motherland, for its future so that no one forgets the lessons of World War Two and so that there is no place in the world for executioners, members of punitive squads and Neo-Nazis," Putin said.

Russian President Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics for assistance he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.