Ukraine marks 25’th independence day with show of anti-Russian force

KIEV: Tanks rumbled across Kiev on Tuesday as Ukraine marked 25 years of independence with a show of force against an increasingly assertive Russia and a war simmering in the pro-Kremlin separatist east.

Thousands of soldiers saluted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on the same square where a pro-EU revolution in 2014 ousted a Moscow-backed leader and left former master Russia fuming. Poroshenko used Wednesday’s event to take a dig at Russian President Vladimir Putin for famous calling the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century".

"We were the ones who created what Putin later called the ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe’," Poroshenko declared in a speech to the nation as hundreds of Ukrainian blue and yellow flags fluttered in the damp wind.

"Looking back at more than two years of war, we can confidently say that our enemy failed to achieve a single goal -- it was not able to bring Ukraine to its knees." More than 9,500 people have died and two million forced from their homes in fighting between government forces and pro-Russian militias in two major industrial regions in the east that rebels have partially controlled since April 2014.