Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Wednesday that Russia is fighting for its historical lands in Ukraine. He was addressing a patriotic rally in the capital, Agence France-Presse reported.
In the patriotic event that praised the Russian offensive in Ukraine, Putin lauded Russian servicemen fighting "heroically, courageously, bravely" in Ukraine. The event was attended by many, braving cold temperatures of -15 degrees Celcius to watch and listen to patriotic performances and speeches at the "Glory to the Defenders of the Fatherland" concert.
The event was held on the eve of the Russian Public holiday and two days before the anniversary of the country's offensive in Ukraine.
The organisers of the event have brought children from the Ukranian Donbas region. They included the port city of Mariupol, which was destroyed by the Russian siege before it got captured.
When Ukraine accused Russia of Kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children, Moscow denied it and claimed that the children were taken through organised legal adoptions.
Officials from the Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed were also at the stadium and spoke to Russian state-run media.
The Kremlin-appointed leader of the Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, said that the West is an accomplice to Ukraine's war crimes. He repeated the Russian discourse that the Ukrainian government is running on Nazi ideology.
President Putin said that Russian speakers in Ukraine were treated as how Nazi Germany did to Jews. He blamed the Western capitals for the escalation in the Ukraine conflict.
After several setbacks in their invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin started to characterise its military action as a war against the West itself, an equivalent of the "Great Patriotic War" against Nazi Germany, AFP reports.