MOSCOW, May 9. /TASS/. The current generation should never lose the memory about the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War and vigilance, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a festive reception in the Kremlin devoted to Victory Day.

"The Day of the Great Victory has been bestowed on us by the country’s fate so that our memory, conscience and our vigilance should never fade away," the Russian leader said.

"Seventy-four years have passed since the spring of 1945 and several generations have grown up but the memory about the past war, about the valiant defenders of the Motherland who crushed Nazism at the cost of enormous victims and losses does not fade away," Putin stressed.

According to the Russian leader, "the enemy was routed not only by the strength of combat hardware and military might. What is important is that the crushing weapons were in the hands of the irreconcilable and consolidated people united in defending their relatives and families both on the front and in the rear."

Victory Day is celebrated "warmly, solemnly, with the son’s pride and with such profound feelings that are hard to be expressed with words," the Russian president said.

"The whole of our people honors and thanks the generation of victors and its heroic path is not a distant history for us but a part of our life, our moral core, a gauge of our aspirations and intentions, acts and deeds," the Russian leader stressed.