Ukraine: Victory Day Parade defiantly held in Donetsk

Donetsk staged a Victory Day Parade on Saturday, despite claims that the presence of military hardware could violate the Minsk agreement. According to officials, 15,000 troops marched through the city, many of whom have fought against the Kiev government's forces. T-72 battle tanks, APC-70 armoured people carriers and self-propelled artillery were showcased at the event, some of which was seized from government forces during the conflict for control of the region. Local authorities invited representatives of the OSCE's (Organisation for the Security and Cooperation in Europe) special monitoring mission to the Victory Day Parade as an assurance that the Minsk peace accords were not being broken. Alexander Zakharchenko, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, vowed that the parade would go ahead on May 9 even if Kiev launched an attack. The city of Donetsk was occupied between October 1941 and September 1943 during which time the city (at the time named Stalino) lost more than 330,000 of its 507,000 citizens.