Aircraft over Red Square on Victory Day - AP photo

I just ran across this lovely personal blogpost by Natalia Antonova, a Moscow-based journalist, about Victory Day, a holiday commemorating the end of WWII and  celebrated far more enthusiastically in Russia than it is in the other former Allied countries. She posts photos of celebrated Soviet WWII veterans (including pilot Maria Dolina and Antonova’s own grandfather) along with her own videos of the no-holds-barred parade.

This year, soldiers from the UK, US, and France joined their former Soviet allies for the massive Red Square parade. You can see photos and read an AP article about the festivities here at NPR.org. 

Here’s to blogpost author Natalia Antonova’s granddad, to Anna Alexandrovna, and to all the other WWII veterans who made sacrifices I can scarcely fathom in that great conflagration that was WWII, the Great Patriotic War, or whatever you choose to call it. I kinda wish I could have been on Red Square yesterday to pay my respects, and to witness the grand spectacle of it all.

-KG