May 9 is Victory Day.

Shortly before midnight on 8 May (00:43 am, Moscow time, May 9), 1945 at the seat of the Soviet Military Administration in Berlin-Karlshorst, now the location of the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, Soviet and German representatives signed the second Act of Military Surrender.

German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces and representative of the army (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) signed the document on behalf of Germany.

Marshal Georgy Zhukov on behalf of the Supreme High Command of the Red Army accepted the Act of Military Surrender.

Among the representatives were Air Chief Marshal Arthur William Tedder, as Deputy Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (United Kingdom); General Carl Spaatz, Commanding United States Strategic Air Forces, as witness; General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, Commanding First French Army, as witness; German Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the navy (Kriegsmarine); German Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff as the representative of the air force (Luftwaffe).

On June 24, 1945, the Victory Parade took place in Red Square in Moscow.

About 500,000 Armenians took part in the Great Patriotic War, with 300,000 from Armenia and others from the other Soviet republics. About 200,000 Armenians, soldiers and officers, were killed.

Victory Day is annually celebrated not only in Russia, but also in the other former Soviet states, as well as in a number of European countries.