RUSSIA: President Vladimir Putin led Russia's celebration of Victory Day yesterday, commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany. He urged nations to unite against what he called the greatest threat to the modern world - international terrorism.
But as Mr Putin watched thousands of troops march across Red Square in the spring sunshine, Chechen rebels reminded Russia of its current military woes by killing one soldier and wounding two other people in a bomb attack that wrecked official Victory Day celebrations in the separatist republic.
Veterans of Moscow's wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya saluted Mr Putin as they strode past the Kremlin. Defence Minister Mr Sergei Ivanov inspected more than 5000 troops from a pale grey, open-top Zil limousine.
Hundreds of white-haired veterans, their medals gleaming, watched events from alongside Red Square.
"Fifty-eight years ago we gained a heroic victory," Mr Putin said from a podium above the mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin.
"The mighty Wehrmacht machine was stopped, a strong, haughty, pitiless enemy was destroyed. An enemy that didn't doubt it would be victorious, and had already subdued all of Europe. But it was broken. Broken here, on our land."
Mr Putin paid tribute to veterans from the former Soviet Union - as millions of people across Russia's old empire, from the Baltic to Afghanistan, marked Victory Day - before urging world leaders to learn the lessons of the past.
"It was unity that helped defeat fascism. This truly priceless experience is needed in our time. A new global and very serious danger has appeared in the world - international terrorism. To combat it, we need to unite the efforts of all civilised countries."
Along with the international call to arms - pertinent ahead of a potentially divisive UN Security Council debate on Iraq's future - Mr Putin offered a thinly-veiled rebuke of what Moscow sees as US attempts to dominate global affairs and create a "unipolar" world.
"At this time, we turn to the lessons of the war. We have to remember how it began and cannot forget how the fascists thought they could decide the fate of the world, the fate of other countries and peoples," he said.
In Chechnya, officials cancelled a Victory Day march in the capital, Grozny, after a bomb killed one soldier, seriously injured another and lightly wounded a policeman. The explosion rattled security services.
"This is blasphemy, designed to spoil the sacred anniversary of a victory for which millions of Russian citizens, including Chechens, sacrificed their lives," said Chechnya's Moscow-backed Prime Minister Mr Anatoly Popov.
