War being waged against Russia, says Putin

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 II 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.

Putin said that Russians were united in a sacred fight with the West over Ukraine but the strains of war were evident at one of the most pared back anniversaries of the victory over Nazi Germany in decades.

Putin has repeatedly likened the war in Ukraine - which he casts as a defensive move against a West which wants to carve up Russia - to the challenge Moscow faced when Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

"The decisive battles for the fate of our Motherland have always become patriotic, all-national and sacred," Putin told veterans and soldiers assembled on Red Square for the annual Victory Day parade.

Putin hailed Russian forces in Ukraine as heroes who were fighting for the country's future against a West which, he said, had forgotten the decisive role played by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany.

Cheers rang out across Red Square, with a gun salute and the Russian national anthem, though with a much curtailed show of military hardware - and no aviation. A single tank took part - a T-34, a type used in World War Two.

The Soviet Union had lost 27 million people in World War II, including many millions in Ukraine, but eventually pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin, where Hitler committed suicide and the red Soviet Victory Banner was raised over the Reichstag in 1945.