Bush, Putin Mark a Shared Victory

In public, the two leaders continued to demonstrate unflagging chumminess. Putin gave Bush the most prominent seat next to him for the parade, and the two smiled as they talked with each other. After Putin's speech, Bush leaned over and appeared to compliment him; as the cameras captured the moment, Putin put his hand on Bush's arm and mouthed the words "thank you" in English.

The two then proceeded on foot with other leaders to the nearby Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to deposit red carnations in salute to the Soviet people, who lost an estimated 27 million countrymen during World War II and played an indispensable role in breaking Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

The celebration came at a time of continuing change for Russia, which is still searching for a national identity nearly 14 years after it emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Led by a former KGB officer, Russia has increasingly engaged in nostalgia for what many feel to be the glory of their fallen empire.

Playing several times during the festivities was the old Soviet national anthem introduced by Stalin and revived by Putin shortly after he was elected president in 2000. And next to the tomb of the unknown where Bush laid flowers was a monument to Soviet cities that endured the war. One of them Putin recently ordered marked Stalingrad, the first time in decades that Stalin's name has been emblazoned on a memorial in Russia. Until last year, it was marked Volgograd, the city's current name.

Far more so than in the United States, the Great Patriotic War, as it is called here, looms large in Russian national mythology, remembered as a period of triumph in an often tortured history. Many couples visit war memorials on their wedding day, and television on Monday showed war movies continuously. Victory Day -- celebrated here on May 9 instead of May 8 as in the West -- is a "sacred day," as Putin put it.

"This day means everything to us," said Alexander Sokolov, 81, who fought from Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, to the eastern Prussian city of Koenigsberg, now the Russian province of Kaliningrad. "We won our great motherland's freedom and independence. And we liberated not just our own country, but Western countries as well."

Anatoly Bondyr, his suit jacket festooned with more than 20 medals, traveled to Moscow from the Crimea in Ukraine. "I had to come because this may be the last time," he said outside the Bolshoi Theater, a traditional gathering point for veterans on Victory Day. Bondyr, 78, said he lied about his age to join the Red Army at 15 and helped push the Germans back all the way to the Elbe River in their country, where he met his first Americans. "They gave me a bottle of whiskey," he said, "and I gave them a bottle of cognac."

The day's events commended ordinary Russians, but few such people were permitted onto Red Square. The Kremlin even refused to allow members of the foreign news media to attend the parade, relegating them watch a Russian broadcast. The city center was eerily quiet during the festivities, the streets empty except for armed police after many Muscovites withdrew to country homes at the urging of authorities.

Bondyr was willing to accept that, seeing a new threat to his beloved country. "It's a pity we couldn't see the parade," he said, "but everyone's afraid of terrorists now so they can't let us all in."