Putin in Crimea first time since annexation

Link to article

Flag of Republic of Donetsk

President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, at Friday arrived Crimea for celebrations of Victory Day in memory of victory over Nazi. He travels to Crimea first time since annexation in March 2014. Many times, Russian leaders, including Vladimir Putin, used Victory Day more to present Russia's power and nationalism, than celebrate victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The annexation provoked the worst tensions between Russia and the West since the height of the Cold War. Mr. Putin maintained that the territory had belonged to Russia ever since it was first captured from the Ottomans in 1783 and that he was only righting a historical wrong. Separatists in Crimea, backed by the Russian military, organized a referendum in which an overwhelming majority of the residents, many of them ethnic Russians, chose to come under the control of Moscow.

Some 11,000 soldiers and 150 military vehicles, from tanks to intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, rumbled through the square. Through cloudless skies, the flyover included 69 aircraft, marking the 69 years since the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. In brief opening remarks before the first soldiers marched, Mr. Putin said that the celebration represented all that makes Russia strong.