MOSCOW, May 9. /TASS/. The Red Army and the Soviet people made a decisive contribution to victory in World War Two, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday as he addressed a major military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, marking 70 years since the Soviet and Allied armies defeated Nazi Germany in 1945.

"Logically, it was the Red Army that as a result of its crushing attack on Berlin put a victorious period to the war with Hitler's Germany," Putin said, recalling that: "The entire multi-ethnic population fought for the freedom of the home country, bore the heaviest burden of the war and together performed an eternal feat of saving the homeland, determining the outcome of World War Two and liberating the people of Europe from the Nazis."

"Wherever veterans of the Great Patriotic War [as the four-year battle between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany is known] may live, they should know that here, in Russia, we honour their persistence, courage and faithfulness to the battlefield fraternity," he added.