World leaders gathered in Moscow on Monday for a grandiose Red Square parade commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany, as Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to unite the world against terrorism and soothe renewed East-West tensions. More than 50 heads of state and government, including US President George W. Bush, joined Putin in front of Lenin's marble mausoleum to watch the Soviet-style parade honouring the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory. Red Army flags fluttered in a light breeze and martial music rang out as Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov rode a vintage Soviet convertible car on an inspection of 9,600 serving soldiers and bemedalled veterans massed under the Kremlin walls.
Impeccably turned-out troops - including some who had served in Russia's much-criticised war in Chechnya - passed on foot, horseback and in columns of World War II military lorries.
Even the weather was stage-managed. Air force planes seeded special chemical agents to disperse heavy rain clouds over Moscow, replacing the drizzle with patches of blue sky just minutes before the ceremony.
A fly-by of fighter jets and a choral rendition of Soviet victory songs closed the parade, before guests went to lay wreaths at Russia's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
In a brief opening speech, Putin sought to set aside a diplomatic row over whether Moscow should apologise for the domination of eastern Europe after the war.
"Faced with today's real threats of terrorism, we must remain faithful to the memory of our fathers," he said.
"We must defend a world order based on security and justice, on a new culture of mutual relations which do not allow any repetition of either Cold Wars or hot wars."
Flanked by leaders including German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Chinese President Hu Jintao, Putin also pointed to German-Russian reconciliation as "one of the most important post-war accomplishments."
In his toast at a gala Kremlin lunch afterwards, the Russian president called the defeat of the Nazis "a victory of civilisation over barbarity," a victory which today afforded peoples and nations the freedom to determine their own destinies.
"The struggle against Nazism gave people back their right to freedom, to their lives, to freely choose their own paths of development and by extension safeguarded the centuries-old traditions, the moral and spiritual cultures of many peoples," Putin said in his toast.
The Russian leader afterwards held a one-on-one meeting with his Chinese counterpart to discuss North Korea's nuclear program, among other issues, and a Kremlin source told ITAR-TASS afterwards the two had agreed Hu would make an official visit to Russia in July.
But while the official programme centred on the Allied victory 60 years ago, the run-up to the celebration was marred by bitter debate over what happened in the subsequent decades until the Soviet break-up in 1991.
The Kremlin has been sparring with Poland and the three tiny Baltic states - all now members of Nato and the European Union - over their demand that Moscow apologise for the Soviet occupation that followed the Nazi retreat across eastern Europe.
The Russian leader has been arguing that the Red Army's massive sacrifice during the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II made the USSR not an occupier, but a liberator.
New official figures that show the Soviet Union lost 26.6 million people in four years of savage fighting with Germany, far more than all other Allied countries combined.
"Our people did not just defend their own homeland - they liberated 11 European states," Putin said last week.
In his Red Square speech, he also responded to mounting criticism in the West of his rule, telling world leaders that "we are building our policies on the principles of freedom and democracy."
Just before the parade, civil society leaders told Bush in a brief meeting that the human rights situation has deteriorated under Putin.
"I for my part told him that civil society in Russia is currently in a difficult state," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of one of Russia's oldest human rights groups, the Helsinki Federation, told AFP after the meeting.
The Bush administration has frequently criticised media freedom and human rights protection in Russia under Putin's five-year rule.
However, unlike 10 years ago when Moscow hosted a 50th anniversary parade, there was no diplomatic protest at the inclusion in the parade of soldiers who have fought in Chechnya, where the Russian army is accused of widespread atrocities.
Then, former US president Bill Clinton and other major leaders refused to attend that part of the ceremony.
V-Day parades also took place in other cities in Russia and some former Soviet republics. Video of one such parade, broadcast on Russian television, showed truck-mounted mobile missile launchers, a regular feature of the Red Square military parades in the Soviet era.