Putin calls for adequate response to new threats to global security

Moscow, May 9 (UNI) Russian President Vladimir Putin today urged the international community to give a common adequate and equitable response to the new threats to global security.

Greeting the Russian troops in his traditional speech at the Red Square on the occasion of 62nd anniversary of Victory over Nazi Germany in WWII, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, President Putin said today the number of threats posed by the "ideology of confrontation and extremism" was not reducing.

Stressing that "causes of any war lie in the errors and miscalculations made in times of peace", he said "Such errors are usually rooted in the ideology of confrontation and extremism." "This is all the more so in our days, as the number of threats is not reducing. Those threats are transforming and changing facades, but they also contain disrespect for human life as well as claims to universal exclusiveness and dictate, quite the same way like it was in the Third Reich," the Russian leader said.

''The only way to offer adequate responses to those threats, and especially to put up coordinated resistance to the attempts to unleash armed conflicts and undermine international security is to be found in common responsibility and equitable partnership," he said.

Referring to the recent removal of Soviet-era Bronze Soldier memorial, in Estonia, President Putin condemned attempts in "some countries" to eliminate monuments to Soviet soldiers who died in combat operation during the WWII.

Victory Day is a day on which we unavoidably think about the destiny of peace, global security and stability," he said, noting the importance of the role that countries of the anti-Hitler coalition played in the common victory.

About 700 Moscow veterans of the Great Patriotic War participated in the military parade on the Red Square.

Twelve specially-equipped airplanes were dispatched to disperse the clouds over Moscow with reagents, Ekho Moskvi radio reported saying they took off from Moscow's Chkalovsky and Ramensky Airports.

UNI