by Nina Achmatova

Moscow celebrates the defeat of Hitler with the traditional military parade on Red Square. The celebrations cost 43 million dollars. Analysts: the government would do better to spend money to aid war veterans still waiting for promised housing to materialise.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - More than 20 thousand men from the army and military academies will watch the traditional parade in Moscow May 9 Victory Day, a national holiday in Russia. The date commemorates the surrender of Hitler's Germany in 1945 and is a day of great national unity for Russians, where even young people feel a strong pride in a nation that has helped weaken the Nazi forces: in contrast to the civil war, Stalin's purges or the gulag, privations and sacrifices endured during the Great Patriotic War (as World War II is called here) meant something. The authorities are aware of the 'emotional' value and take advantage of the anniversary, especially now that the presidential elections approach.

This year, for the first time, 200 officers of the Space mission will parade on Red Square. To the sound of the 1500 military band musicians, over 100 heavy vehicles will flood the streets of central Moscow, an event days in preparation :  beds were filled with flowers, streets resurfaced, flags with the national colours hung everywhere and youth groups posted close to metro stations to distribute the typical 'ribbons of St. George' black and orange, a symbol of Remembrance. Throughout the week, at night tanks take to the street for practise runs ahead of the parade, during the day you meet at every turn war veterans in their uniforms decorated, accompanied by wives or children to events of all kinds, in schools, offices and public parks.

Although they are the real protagonists of this event, the veterans seem to have been the most forgotten by the Kremlin, denounced Alexander Golts, deputy director of the newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal. "For the senior officials of the State - the journalist in an editorial notes - to be photographed with senior retired military in dated uniforms is not seen as beneficial to their image." "Hhowever, posing alongside an S-400 air missile or watching from the stands under the Kremlin's young soldiers who scream the typical 'Hurrah', this, instead, is patriotism."

Celebrations for Victory Day will cost the Defense Ministry and municipalities around the country about 43 million dollars. The government, many point out, would put taxpayers' money to better use helping veterans. Many of them still live in extreme conditions of poverty, waiting for the apartments, which Moscow has promised to them for decades. Every May 9.

• Russia
• Victory
• Day
• military
• parade
• red
• square
• army
• veterans
• world
• war
• II
• unity
• patriotism