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President Vladimir Putin: Comrade soldiers and sailors, sergeants and sergeant-majors!

Comrade warrant officers, officers, generals and admirals!

Dear veterans!

Citizens of Russia!

I congratulate on this holiday, Victory Day!

My greetings to you who brought Victory to each home in 1945, who saved your Motherland and defended other countries’ independence, who gave the world life, peace and freedom.

I give my thanks to the veterans of the Great Patriotic War. They did not allow the country to be brought to its knees. They proved that no enemy could break us, frighten us or vanquish us, and they showed that our Motherland has and always will have a huge reserve of strength.

May 9 is the summit of our glory. The people do not forget such sacred dates. We know the significance of this victory and at what cost it was won. We remember that it was our country, our army that dealt the decisive, crippling blow to Nazism, reduced it to ashes and determined the outcome of World War Two.

So much went into this Victory: courage and self sacrifice, endurance and faith, grief and tears. Countless were the paths of this war and the trials endured.

Soldiers launched the offensive to bring victory closer. Mothers, wives and children bore the heavy burden of labour on the home front. Today, decades later, we honour the personal exploits of each and every one of them. Today we remember those who fell on the battlefield, those who were tortured in the camps and who died of hunger and from their wounds, all those who sacrificed their lives defending their country’s unquestionable right to remain a free nation and who gave the world this day that liberated it from war.

Victory Day truly is a holiday shared by all. It is a holiday shared by the peoples of Russia and the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. We stood together in this terrible struggle against Nazism. It was precisely this time that forged our solid bonds of brotherhood, a brotherhood that has stood the test of time and the test of life itself.

We never forget this, no matter where we may be. The veterans of the Great Patriotic War recall this storm of their youth and remember their fellow soldiers. A sacred friendship such as this can know no borders.

Today’s anniversary gives us cause to look back at the lessons of the Second World War. We know how fascism emerged, and we know that only by joining forces was the world able to deal the final blow to Nazism. Our allies in the anti-fascist coalition each made their contribution to this Victory. This year, we will mark together the 60th anniversary of the opening of the second front in Europe.

But we must not forget today that the Nazi swastika is still to be seen in the world and that fascist ideas are still alive. Added to this is an evil no less great, that of international terrorism, an evil that also sows death and destruction.

The mission of the entire world community today is to ensure these terrorists meet with due resistance and to free the world from this scourge.

Dear citizens of Russia!

Today we are celebrating the holiday that brings us closest together, and we are proud to have such a day, this day of our national unity.

Not only does this day unite us, it incites us to be the equals of our fathers and grandfathers, to measure up to their ability to love the Motherland, their desire for freedom, their readiness to defend every last inch of their native soil and to be victorious, to be victorious in every way.

These feelings swell in our hearts today, filling us with the desire to work for peace, to work for the good of our great Motherland, for the good of our beloved Russia.

Happy holiday, dear friends!

Happy Victory Day!

Glory to the victorious people!

Glory to Russia!

Hurrah!