President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said a "real war" was again being waged against Russia as he invoked the Soviet Union's victory in World War Two to say the West was trying to destroy his country.
In a speech on Red Square as part of Russia's Victory Day celebrations, Putin said Russia wanted to see a peaceful future, and said the entire country was behind what Russia calls the "special military operation" in Ukraine.
"Today civilisation is again at a decisive turning point," Putin said at the parade, which included elderly veterans and soldiers from Russia's Ukraine campaign, adding: "A war has been unleashed against our motherland."
Putin said the West had forgotten the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
He called for Russia to be victorious: "For Russia, for our armed forces, for victory! Hurrah!"
"The Ukrainian people became hostages of the coup d'état and the criminal regime of its Western masters that had developed on its basis, a bargaining chip in the implementation of their cruel, selfish plans," Putin said in his address at the Victory Day parade in Moscow, a holiday that commemorates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
The 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, which Moscow claims were supported by the West, had led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was viewed as pro-Russian.
Moscow started its "special military operation" in Ukraine last year in February to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine. For Western countries, however, it is a war of aggression and they have imposed severe sanctions in response.
Putin said "exorbitant ambitions, arrogance and permissiveness" turned into a "tragedy," which he claimed to be the reason for "the current catastrophe in Ukraine."
He said the West "still talks about its exclusivity, pit people and split society, provoke bloody conflicts and coups, sow hatred, Russophobia, aggressive nationalism, and destroy family and traditional values that make a person human."
The Russian leader said the West follows the approach "to continue to dictate, to impose their will, their rights, rules on the peoples - in essence, a system of robbery, violence and suppression."
"Their aim is to achieve the disintegration and destruction of our country, cross out the results of World War II, finally break the system of global security and international law, strangle any sovereign centers of development," he claimed.
