Also taking part in the ceremony were President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, 1941–1945 Great Patriotic War veterans, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko, Speaker of the State Duma Sergei Naryshkin, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Ivanov, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, and President of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin.
The participants honoured the memory of the fallen in the Great Patriotic War with a minute of silence. Mr Putin and Mr Nazarbayev also laid flowers at the hero-city obelisks.