The anniversary has remained a public holiday, officially called Victory and Peace Day, in Armenia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Some 320,000 residents of Soviet Armenia, then a republic of just 1.3 million people, were drafted to the Soviet army during the bloodiest war in the history of humankind. The total number of its ethnic Armenian participants from various Soviet republics is estimated at more than 500,000. About half of them were killed in action.
In a statement issued on the occasion Pashinian praised Armenians’ “invaluable” contribution to the defeat of “one of the greatest evils: fascism.”
“107 Armenians were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, many of our compatriots fought in the armies of the allied countries, participated in the anti-fascist struggle of a number of countries and were crowned with glory,” he said. “Today we bow to the deeds and memory of our heroes, our martyrs, and we are proud of the heroism of our ancestors.”
Pashinian and President Vahagn Khachaturian led in the morning a wreath-laying ceremony at the war memorial located in Yerevan’s Victory Park. Armenian and Russian soldiers marched past its eternal fire during the ceremony.
Thousands of people, among them elderly war veterans, visited the memorial in the following hours.
Pashinian also exchanged traditional congratulatory messages with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other ex-Soviet leaders.
“The memory of the great past obliges us to strengthen the bonds of friendship inherited by us and to comprehensively develop Armenian-Russian relations for the benefit of the peoples of our countries,” he wrote to Putin.