How Putin uses USSR's victory in World War II to rally support for him and war in Ukraine

HARDLY any other country marks the end of World War II with the same fanfare and fervour as Russia, for which the victory over Nazi Germany 80 years ago remains a source of immense pride and a defining moment of history.

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Victory Day, celebrated on May 9, is Russia's most important secular holiday, reflecting its wartime sacrifice. But it's also used by the Kremlin to bolster patriotism and regain the superpower prestige it lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia for 25 of those 80 years, has turned Victory Day into a key pillar of his tenure and has tried to use it to justify his 3-year-old invasion of Ukraine.

He has also sought to underline the failure of Western efforts to isolate Moscow by inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders to the festivities, which this year have been overshadowed by reports of Ukrainian drone attacks targeting Moscow and severe disruptions at the capital's airports, as well as cell phone internet outages.

A look at why Victory Day is so important for Russia and Putin:

The Soviet sacrifice of World War II

The Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 million people in what it calls the Great Patriotic War from 1941-45. That sacrifice left a deep scar in the national psyche.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and quickly overran the western part of the country. They got as close as 30 kilometres (under 19 miles) from Moscow by October of that year, but the Red Army rebounded and routed the invaders.

Soviet troops dealt crushing defeats to Germany in 1943 in Stalingrad and Kursk. And then drove the Nazi forces back across the western Soviet Union all the way to Berlin.