OREANDA-NEWS Russian President Vladimir Putin takes the Victory Parade from the central podium on Red Square. By tradition, combat veterans and participants of the Great Patriotic War are invited to the parade.

The Head of State took his place in the center of the podium. Veterans who celebrated their centenary are sitting on both sides of him. On Putin's right hand is Yevgeny Kuropatkov, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, a retired captain of the 1st rank. In June 1941, he was drafted into the army, and on July 19 he took the military oath and was sent to the front line with orders to stand to the death. Kuropatkov participated in the defense of the hero cities of Stalingrad and Leningrad, participated in the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945 in Moscow on Red Square as part of the parade crew of the F. E. Artillery Academy. Dzerzhinsky and the troops of the Moscow garrison. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, he graduated from the military Academy and served in the Soviet Army for more than 30 years in the Department of Rocket and Artillery armament of the USSR Navy. Among Kuropatkov's awards are the Order of the Patriotic War I degree, two Orders of the Red Star, the Order "For Service to the Motherland in the Armed Forces of the USSR" III degree and many medals.

To the left of the head of state is Alexandra Alyoshina. During the Great Patriotic War, she dug anti-tank ditches near Naro-Fominsk, graduated from the women's sniper training school, and then trained more than twenty snipers herself. Alyoshina was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War II degree, the Zhukov Medal, the medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", the medal "For Valiant Labor during the Great Patriotic War".

On the central podium in the first row, along with Putin, the heads of foreign states invited to Victory Day also settled down. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, Lao President Thonglong Sisulit, and President of Guinea-Bissau Umaru Sisoku Embalo specially arrived in Moscow. It is especially symbolic that among the honored guests are the leaders of countries whose peoples, being part of a Secular Union, defeated fascism together almost 80 years ago. The heads of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are present at the central podium. Veterans of the Great Patriotic War are also sitting next to them. Among them are 102-year-old aviation regiment veteran Nikolai Fedorovich Shishkin and Soviet pilot Galina Pavlovna Beltsova, the only female navigator of the Pe-2 dive bomber currently living in the world.