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Vladivostok commemorates 75th anniversary of beginning of Great Patriotic War

Xinhua, June 22, 2016 Adjust font size:

A parade in Russia's Far East city of Vladivostok was held on Wednesday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

Participants held candles and lay flowers to the Eternal Flame to honor the fallen soldiers. They also observed a minute of silence.

"I was 17 when Sunday morning we heard the news on the radio that our country was attacked by Germany without declaring war. Nobody wanted to believe it. People hoped it was a mistake, but it wasn't," Nikitin Boris, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, told Xinhua.

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union at dawn. On the very first day of the war, German invaders destroyed 1,200 Soviet planes, tanks and cannons and killed thousands of people.

In 2007, a new memorial was designated on June 22 marking the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Endi