Fierce battles raged in eastern Ukraine while Putin made his Victory Day speech against a backdrop of intercontinental ballistic missiles rumbling through Moscow's emblematic Red Square.
KYIV - President Vladimir Putin on Monday defended Russia's war in Ukraine as necessary to protect the "Motherland" as Moscow flexed its military muscle at a huge parade marking the 1945 Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
"You are fighting for the Motherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of the Second World War," he said. Western powers were unimpressed by Putin's words. British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace accused Putin of "mirroring fascism", French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the Russian leader was "in denial" and US State Department spokesman Ned Price called his speech "patently absurd" and an "insult" to history.
Pro-Russian separatists feted Victory Day in Ukraine's devastated southern port of Mariupol, where depleted Ukrainian forces are defending their final bastion at the Azovstal steelworks. Yet in Kyiv the commemoration day was largely shunned as life slowly returned to normal, weeks after fierce fighting raged in its suburbs.US President Joe Biden signed a Lend-Lease Act - modelled on World War II efforts to fight Nazi Germany - that cuts through bureaucratic hurdles to speed up weapons shipments to Ukraine.
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