The war always happens suddenly, although after some time it appears inevitable. In 1941, the most terrible and bloody human tragedy for Russian people began - the Great Patriotic War.

At dawn on June 22, 1941, fascist Germany, in violation of the Soviet-German agreements of 1939, attacked the USSR, which needed to take emergency measures to organize a rebuff to the invaders and radically rebuild the life of the state, turning the country into a single camp against the enemy.

The whole people stood up to fight against the enslavers. At the front and in the rear, people of all nationalities united by one goal - to survive and to win. Already in 1941, the plan of lightning war, during which the German command planned to capture the entire Soviet Union in a few months, failed.

The country survived, the course of events turned. Soviet soldiers defeated the fascist troops near Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad, in the Caucasus, inflicted devastating blows to the enemy in other directions. The Berlin operation of 1945, which became the final one in Great Patriotic War, involved more than 2.5 million soldiers and officers, 6,250 tanks and self-propelled guns, 7,500 aircraft. The losses turned out to be huge: according to official figures, the Red Army lost more than 15 thousand soldiers and officers in a day, and in total within the operation around 352 thousand people.

On May 9, 1945 at 00:43 by Moscow time, the Act of Unconditional Surrender of Germany was signed to end the Great Patriotic War, the most important and decisive part of World War II (1939-1945), which became the largest military conflict in the history of mankind.

In total the Soviet Union lost about 27 million people (40% of all casualties in the Second World War). A significant part fell on the civilian population of the country. According to official figures, in the USSR, invaders completely or partially destroyed more than 1.7 thousand cities and towns, more than 70 thousand villages.

Victory Day is a nationwide holiday of the Russian Federation, held annually on May 9 to mark the Great Victory. It was and remains the most revered holiday both in Russia and in the former republics of the Soviet Union. According to the glorious tradition of recent years, St. George ribbons are distributed everywhere by volunteers, which are tied and worn not only by veterans, but also by youth, as a symbol of generational connection and the memory of the Great Victory.

The tradition of recent years was the holding on May 9 of the civil-patriotic campaign "Immortal Regiment", which today has become an international public movement to preserve personal memory of the generation of the Great Patriotic War. Every year, on Victory Day, tparticipants pass a convoy through the streets of cities with photographs of their relatives, whether they are veterans, partisans, freedom and resistance fighters, rear workers, prisoners of concentration camps, survivors of siege of Leningrad, children of war, and also write family stories about them in the People's Chronicle on the website of "Immortal Regiment" movements. To this date, the action covers more than 80 states and territories, including Bangladesh.

The writer is the Counsellor, Embassy of the Russian Federation, People's Republic of Bangladesh and Director of the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Dhaka.