Remember their sacrifice!

 

Russian ambassador Andrei Kelin 

by New Worker correspondent 

Millions of Russians took to the streets on Saturday to celebrate Victory Day and the surrender of the Third Reich on 9th May 1945. Every year, the Russian Federation celebrates the victorious end of the Second World War with parades and processions across the country while similar tributes to the millions of Soviet soldiers and citizens who died in the struggle to defeat the Nazis were held in much of the former Soviet Union, Europe and the rest of the world. And on Saturday comrades joined diplomats, solidarity campaigners and members of the Russian ex-pat community for a wreath-laying ceremony at the Soviet War Memorial in London to mark the 81st anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Wreaths were laid on Saturday 9th May at the Soviet War Memorial in Lambeth to honour the 27 million Soviet citizens and service members who died in what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War that ended in 1945 with the Soviet flag over the Brandenburg Gate and Hitler dead in his bunker in Berlin.
The solemn commemoration brought together ambassadors and diplomats from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, alongside members of the Russian-speaking community as well as British communists and anti-fascist campaigners who came to pay their respects to the fallen.
The memorial in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park next to the Imperial War Museum, unveiled in 1999, honours the millions of Soviet citizens who lost their lives in the fight against Nazism during the Second World War. The block of rare crimson quartzite was mined in Karelia in the north west of Russia – the same type of stone with which the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the wall of the Moscow Kremlin is lined.