MOSCOW, May 9. /TASS/. A military parade to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s Victory over Nazi Germany in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War took place on Moscow’s Red Square.
The parade began with the march of the Honor Guard’s banner group carrying the Russian national flag and the legendary Victory Banner across Red Square. The Victory Banner was hoisted over the Reichstag by soldiers of the Soviet 150th Idritskaya rifle division in May 1945.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, war veterans and guests watched the parade from the central reviewing stand on Red Square. Russian Defense Minister General of the Army Sergey Shoigu reviewed the parade, which was commanded by Ground Forces Commander-in-Chief General of the Army Oleg Salyukov.
This year, Russia’s Victory Parade on Moscow’s Red Square involved 11,000 troops and 131 items of military and special hardware.
The airborne part of the military parade on Moscow’s Red Square was cancelled due to unfavorable weather.
"The airborne part of the parade will not take place due to weather," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS before the parade’s commencement.
The airborne part of the parade was intended to involve 77 fixed-and rotary-wing aircraft to represent the number of years that have passed since the end of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War.
The foot columns comprised 33 parade units that included officers, sergeants and soldiers of military units and formations of the Western Military District, students and cadets of military educational institutions, Suvorov infantry and Nakhimov naval schools and cadet corps, Young Army Movement members and representatives of other ministries and agencies and the all-Russia Cossack Society.
Russian servicemen who took part in battles in the Donbass region also took part in the military parade on Moscow’s Red Square.
A legendary T-34 tank traditionally led the mechanized column at the Victory Day Parade. The mechanized column included Taifun off-road armored vehicles, BMP-2, BMP-3 and Kurganets-25 infantry fighting vehicles, T-72B3M, T-90M ‘Proryv’ and T-14 ‘Armata main battle tanks, Iskander-M tactical missile systems, Msta-S howitzers and Tornado-G multiple launch rocket systems, Tor-M2, Buk-M3 and S-400 ‘Triumf’ surface-to-air missile systems, Yars ICBM launchers and Uran-9 combat robotic vehicles.
