VOLGOGRAD, Russia (AP) - Aging Soviet veterans watched Sunday while young Russian soldiers marched to mark the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, a blood-drenched World War II turning point.
The war remains a powerful source of pride and pain in Russia that lost millions of soldiers and civilians in the fight against Nazi Germany.
Some 250 veterans from across Russia, joined by political leaders and foreign ambassadors, including Germany's, placed flowers and wreaths at a memorial in downtown Volgograd - formerly Stalingrad - before watching a parade of soldiers in uniforms tailored like those worn by Soviet troops of 60 years ago.
Minutes of silence were held throughout the city, and the ceremony shifted to a massive monument - a woman representing the Motherland, holding a sword high in the air and towering near a mass grave of 35,000 veterans and civilians of the victims who died defending the city against Nazi invaders.
President Vladimir Putin arrived laid a wreath, standing silently and then bending to one knee, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Putin also placed a bouquet at the grave of a marshal who died in the 1942-43 battle. The president attended with three Stalingrad survivors whose numbers are fast dwindling.
``I cried this morning because only three World War II veterans are left alive in our village and only I was able to come here. The others are ill,'' said Valentin Antyukheyev, 80, a resident of Krasnooktybrskaya outside Volgograd. ``I remember how we fought for every meter of this soil and how badly the city was ruined.''
Ambassadors from the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy and other nations that fought in World War II took part in the ceremonies marking 60 years since the end of the grueling battle, which came Feb. 2, 1943, when German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered in the basement of the city's main department store.
One million Soviet soldiers and civilians were killed in the fighting in and around the city, while hundreds of thousands of German soldiers died at Stalingrad or in prison camps afterward.
The German defeat marked a turning point in the war, crushing Hitler's drive to isolate the Soviet heartland from the southern oil fields, and the battle remains a powerful symbol of Soviet courage and perseverance during the second world war, which is often called the Great Patriotic War in Russia.
The anniversary ceremonies came amid a movement to restore the name Stalingrad to this industrial river city 550 miles southeast of Moscow. Formerly called Tsaritsyn, the city became Stalingrad in 1925, and then Volgograd in 1961 when the Soviet Union began facing up to the horrors of Stalin's rule.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder offered a message of sympathy Saturday on behalf of his country. ``Stalingrad is a symbol for the immeasurable suffering that the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union brought upon millions of people. The events of Stalingrad will remain in the collective memories of our peoples,'' it said.