World War Two veteran Abla Begaliyev, 91, is seen in an undated handout picture (L), poses for a picture in Arashan (Top R) and at home in Kyrgyzstan April 14, 2015. Begaliyev served in the border guard cavalry from February 1942 until April 1947. Originally from Kyrgyzstan, he fought on the Ukrainian front and relocated to the border with Afghanistan at the end of World War Two. As the world marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, Reuters photographers the length and breadth of the former Soviet republics (CCCP) captured portraits of Red Army veterans, mostly now in their 80s and 90s, today and through archive pictures at the time. More than 20 million Soviet citizens were killed in the war. (Photo by Vladimir Pirogov/Reuters/Family handout (L))

World War II reenactors gather ahead of the 80th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, Normandy region, France, on June 2, 2024. (Photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters)

Seals dressed in military uniforms swim during a show marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, at an aquatic park in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, Russia, May 9, 2015. (Photo by Evgeny Kozyrev/Reuters)

A boy shoots a World War II ages machine gun with blanks at a weapon exhibition during a military show in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, July 10, 2022. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

An OV-10 Bronco aircraft, decorated with World War One commemoration motifs, flies over Flanders international airport, ahead of the world's first Short Take Off & Landing competition on sand, in Wevelgem, Belgium May 8, 2018. (Photo by Francois Lenoir/Reuters)

In this photo made Thursday, April 11, 2013, Soviet Jewish World War Two veteran Boris Ginsburg poses for a portrait at his house in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod. Ginsburg, born in Belorussia, was kept by a German garrison in the Lenin ghetto since 1941 until its destruction by partisan units in September 1942. In 1942 he joined the partisans for two years and in 1944 he joined the Red Army as a combat soldier and fought till the and of the war. Ginsubrg demobilized in 1947 and immigrated to Israel in 2001. About 500,000 Soviet Jews served in the Red Army during World War Two, and the majority of those still alive today live in Israel. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Russian soldiers dressed in Red Army World War II uniforms attend a rehearsal for the Nov. 7 parade in the Red Square with Spassky Tower in the background, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, November 6, 2015. The parade marks the 74th anniversary of a November 7 parade on Red Square when soldiers went directly to the front during World War II. For decades Nov. 7 was a holiday celebrating the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. (Photo by Ivan Sekretarev/AP Photo)

The 100-metre (300-foot), sword-wielding statue of “The Motherland” is seen in the National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War in Kiev March 17, 2014. On a blustery day on the banks of the Dnieper, the statue of “The Motherland”, a Soviet hammer and sickle on her shield, towered overhead, a reminder of the common cause Ukrainians and Russians died for side by side in their millions in World War Two and which Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks Ukraine has betrayed by turning to “fascism” and the West. (Photo by Konstantin Grishin/Reuters)