Minute of silence

MOSCOW, May 9 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia will remember those perished during the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War by observing a minute of silence on Victory Day traditionally celebrated in the former Soviet Union on May 9.

All television channels and radio stations will interrupt their broadcasts at 18:55 Moscow time (1455 GMT) in memory of the victims of that war. A minute of science will begin after the chime of the Kremlin tower clock.

A minute of silence has been observed in the former Soviet Union and then in Russia and broadcast by radio and television on May 9 since 1965.

The Soviet Union sustained the biggest human and material losses in World War II. According to official, and still incomplete, data, the country lost about 27 million people. Irrecoverable losses of the Red Army were 8,860,400 people.