This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

It is the 8th of May 2025.

The 8th of May, 1945.

The end of the Second War in Europe.

V.E. Day is what it was called in the United States.

V.E. Day is what it was called in all of Europe, except because of the time difference,

Moscow received the final detail of the German surrender of everything, one o'clock in the morning on the 9th of May.

Hence, we see today the celebration of victory of the Great Patriotic War is two days, eight and nine in Russia. Today, a summit between Mr. Putin, the

President of Russian Federation, and Xi Jinping, the General Secretary and President of the China.

Tomorrow, the ninth for Russia, is the parade led by Zhukov, the commanding general of the victory in Europe,

riding a white stallion down the middle of Red Square, and then followed all of the veterans.

However, the veterans were with us for 80 years.

Some were still with us.

And in those 80 years, there's always memory of the families of the estimate,

only an estimate, 30 million lost in the Great Patriotic War. A inheritor of that history,

joins me now. Svetlana Lakova. Svetlana is an historian and an author. She has agreed also to provide

the anecdote she has learning about her family and how they participated. Grandfathers,

great-grandfathers, great-uncles, great-uncle's mothers, great-grandmothers, great-grandmothers, in all directions, because the war

touched everybody no matter where you were in Russia and afterwards. Svetlana, a very good day to you.

I begin with this. It's important to say this as younger people. I was born in the late 1940s.

I'm a boomer.

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