Russian President Vladimir Putin defended the offensive in Ukraine on Monday during a military parade celebrating the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his confidence in winning the war.

“You are fighting for the Fatherland, for your future,” Putin said, speaking directly to the Armed Forces. Speech, II. It preceded the military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, celebrating the victory over the Nazis in World War II.

Putin once again justified in front of thousands of soldiers that Kiev was preparing an attack against pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country, that he wanted to develop the atomic bomb, and that his decision to launch a counterattack on Ukraine on February 24. Support from Ukraine. nato.

“A completely unacceptable threat is posed directly at our borders,” he said, before accusing the neighboring country of neo-Nazism and classifying the attack as a “preventive response”.

“It was the only right decision possible,” he added.

The security forces deployed along the walking route in the city center placed the letter “Z” on the right shoulder as it was painted on vehicles in Ukraine, which has become the symbol of the offensive supporters in Ukraine. Russian troops ahead.

“20,000 coffins”

After the speech, 11,000 soldiers and dozens of vehicles, including strategic missile launchers, paraded in Red Square. Troops returning from the Ukrainian front also participated.

The aerial portion of the parade was canceled due to weather conditions.

“No one could have imagined that 77 years later the fascist forces would resurrect, the Nazi forces would destroy civilians, smash the corpses of Russians,” said Anastasia Rybina, 37, an economist who attended a march in Moscow. She told AFP.

Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, the traditional May 9 parade celebrates both the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany and Russia’s humiliating power after the fall of the USSR.

Shortly before Putin’s speech, Zelensky released a video in which he claimed that Ukraine would not allow Russia to “claim the victory over Nazism.”

“On the day of victory over the Nazis, we are fighting for another victory. The road to this victory is long, but we have no doubts about our victory,” he said in a determined tone.

“We won then. We will win now,” the Ukrainian president said in his video, walking down a street in central Kiev.

More than two months after Russian troops entered Ukraine, fighting is now intensifying in the east of the country. Moscow could not take the capital, Kiev, due to the intense resistance of the Ukrainians, who were armed by the Western countries.

“Putin should have passed dozens of wounded Russian soldiers in the parade,” said Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Yevgen Yenn.

Or take 20,000 coffins to Red Square so that Russian mothers can see how their children died or were maimed in Ukraine.”

Kyiv practically did not celebrate the date.

“Fascism and Tyranny”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled” by the bombing of a school in Lugansk on Saturday and the death of 60 civilian refugees there.

At the request of Kiev, the UN Human Rights Council, with the support of dozens of countries, will hold an extraordinary meeting on Thursday on “The worsening of the human rights situation in Ukraine” due to the Russian occupation.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, 2nd President of Vladimir Putin’s government.

An EU official said that in Odessa, in southern Ukraine, European Council President Charles Michel had to seek protection during a surprise visit due to missile attacks.

“The Kremlin wants to suppress the spirit of freedom and democracy,” Charles Michel assured in a video posted on Twitter, “wholly convinced it will never succeed.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday that the institution will submit it in June in response to Ukraine’s urgent application for membership in the European Union.

But French President Emmanuel Macron poured cold water on Ukraine’s desire to join the European Union quickly and said its eventual membership would take “decades”.

“Intense Battles”

On the battlefield, intense fighting took place this Monday around Rubizhne and Bilogorivka in the Luhansk region.

So far, Russia has managed to fully control only one major city, Kherson, and the military offensive that many analysts believe will be swift has been marred by many setbacks, notably logistics.

After being held around Kyiv, the Russian General Staff had to curb its ambitions and began to intensify its offensive in the east and south of the country.

The Ukrainian military, stationed at major steelworks in Azovstal, in Mariupol, an almost entirely Russian-controlled southeastern port, said it had no plans to surrender.

Pro-Russian separatists marched on Monday in the port city, which had been almost completely conquered by the Russian army, carrying a huge ribbon of Saint George, a symbol of Russian patriotism.

In Warsaw, pro-Ukrainian protesters threw red liquid at Russia’s ambassador to Poland as he went to a memorial in the Polish capital where Soviet soldiers killed during WWII were buried.