Putin promises actual V-Day celebration after COVID-19 pandemic

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that the country will hold a "broad and solemn" celebration for the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

"We will do it with dignity, as our duty to those who suffered and won dictates," Putin said in an address to the nation after laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside the Kremlin wall.

"The spiritual and moral significance of the Victory Day remains invariably great and our attitude to it is sacred. This is our memory and pride, the history of our country, the history of each family," Putin said as he congratulated veterans and the people on the 75th anniversary.

Russia annually celebrates Victory Day on May 9 as a national holiday.

The legal document marking the extinction of Nazi Germany was signed and became effective on the night of May 8, 1945, Berlin time, and it was already in the wee hours of May 9 Moscow time.

This marked the end of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, an integral part of World War II lasting from 1939 to 1945.

The catastrophic war claimed about 27 million human lives of the Soviet Union, according to official statistics.