Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the Victory Day parade from the central grandstand on Red Square. As tradition dictates, veterans of combat operations and participants of the Great Patriotic War are invited to the parade.
The head of state has taken his place in the center of the grandstand. On both sides of him sit veterans who have marked their centenary. To Putin's right sits Yevgeny Kuropatkov, a participant of the Great Patriotic War, a retired captain of the 1st rank. In June 1941, he was drafted into the army, and by July 19th, he had already taken his military oath and was sent to the front with orders to stand to the death. Kuropatkov participated in the defense of the Hero Cities of Stalingrad and Leningrad and took part in the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945, in Moscow's Red Square as part of the ceremonial unit of the F. E. Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy and the Moscow Garrison troops. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, he graduated from a military academy and served in the Soviet Army for over 30 years in the management of missile and artillery weapons of the Soviet Navy. Among Kuropatkov's awards are the Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class, two Orders of the Red Star, the Order "For Service to the Homeland in the Armed Forces of the USSR" 3rd Class, and numerous medals.
To the left of the head of state is Alexandra Aleshina. During the Great Patriotic War, she dug anti-tank trenches near Naro-Fominsk, graduated from a sniper school for women, and then trained over twenty snipers herself. Aleshina was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd Class, Zhukov's Medal, the Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", and the Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War years".
On the central grandstand in the front row, along with Putin, are also foreign heads of state invited to Victory Day. Specifically, President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez of Cuba, President Thongloun Sisoulith of Laos, and President Umaro Sissoco Embaló of Guinea-Bissau have arrived in Moscow for the occasion. It is especially symbolic that among the honored guests are leaders of countries whose peoples, as part of the Allied Union, together defeated fascism almost 80 years ago. Present on the central grandstand are the heads of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Alongside them are also veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Among them is 102-year-old veteran of an aviation regiment Nikolai Fedorovich Shishkin and Soviet pilot Galina Pavlovna Beltsova, the only living woman in the world who was a navigator of a dive bomber Pe-2.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: official website of the President of the Russian Federation
Based on materials from TASS