Soviet war dead remembered

An emotional wreath-laying ceremony was held at the Soviet War Memorial in London today as the loss of 27 million soldiers and civilians from the former USSR in the Second World War was commemorated.

Representatives from former Soviet republics including Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the Russian Federation laid tributes at the memorial outside the Imperial War Museum.

For them May 9 – rather than May 8 – marks the end of the conflict they called The Great Patriotic War.

While a huge parade was held in Moscow’s Red Square to mark the 60th anniversary of victory, a small contingent of survivors gathered in the British capital, along with embassy staff and British war veterans.

Kira Ivanova, a survivor of the brutal siege of Leningrad, said: “The ceremony today was very moving and it brings back memories. The siege was desperately hard. My grandmother, my two aunts and my uncle died of hunger. But the most terrible things we only learned later.

“I was 17 and had just graduated from school. All the boys from my school had joined the army and we found out that only one out of 45 had survived.

“When the war ended we students gathered around the university. We knew the war was over because the radio stations announced it. The feeling I felt was overwhelming joy.”

Addressing the ceremony, new Defence Secretary John Reid praised “the peoples of the former Soviet Union because of the sacrifices they made and the heroic efforts they made in the defeat of Nazism and the poison of Fascism that so blighted Europe”.

Mr Reid went on: “Twenty-seven million dead – it’s unimaginable.

“It’s therefore with a deep humility and respect that I am here on a day when, whatever our differences, we remember that period, that epoch, that struggle which brought us together in the highest of all human attainments – the preparedness of people to lay down their lives for others when they believe in a cause that is worthy and just.”

Frank Russell, 81, from Barking, east London, a Normandy veteran who served with the Royal Tank Regiment, said: “You just have to look at the sheer figures involved. Twenty-seven million Russians is such a massive figure – it’s difficult to get your head round it.

“We could never have done it on our own. Just think of the size of the Russian army and the trouble they still had with the German army.

“We couldn’t have done it alone – we might have had to try but it would have been a different outcome.

“Today your mind just goes back to where you were, you can’t forget it and it will stay there forever.”

Harry Keeble, 85, from Dagenham, Essex, who served with the Army Medical Corps, said: “Very often on this day Russians come here. It’s a chance to remember the people left behind.”

Philip Matthews, chairman of the Soviet Memorial Trust Fund, said: “Today is the day when we remember our wartime allies, the former Soviet Union and the great sacrifices the people of the former Soviet Union made so we could live in freedom.

“There is no doubt that we in this country could not have defeated Germany without their help and we must never forget the heroism of the people of the former Soviet Union and we must also never forget the Soviet prisoners of war that died in the Channel Islands – over 400 died there, worked to death as slave labour, although the true figure may never be known.”