February 3, 2003	Monday	Zilhaj 1,1423

VOLGOGRAD, Feb 2: President Vladimir Putin marked the 60th anniversary of the Russian Stalingrad victory against Germany on Sunday but avoided being drawn into a campaign to give Volgograd back its wartime name.

Putin, who usually steers clear of such disputes, was drawn into the name spat in a live television phone-in show in December, when he gave a cautious “no” to a Communist proposal — popular among military veterans — to scrap the city’s current name.

Its renaming back to Stalingrad would be a valuable victory for Russia’s Communist party, keen to cash in on popular nostalgia about the pivotal Soviet victory only months before a parliamentary election.

But in meetings with Stalingrad’s defenders from World War Two, Putin avoided the row on Sunday, dwelling instead on the battle’s historical meaning.

“Such victories reflect the character of the people, the honour and dignity of the nation,” he told a hushed audience of grey-haired veterans decked in medals.

“Thank you for not giving yourselves up, for not retreating, for strengthening Soviet and Russian military glory, for winning the war,” he said.

Putin then read a message by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder calling for closer cooperation between the two countries as a tribute to the dead.

More than two million people died during 200 days of desperate fighting between the Red Army and German soldiers for control over the strategic city on the west bank of the Volga river.

The battle, the war’s bloodiest, ended in a humiliating siege of the Germans and effectively wiped out the elite German 6th army.

RENAMED: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev renamed the city Volgograd, or City on the Volga, in 1961, after publicly condemning his predecessor Joseph Stalin’s murderous record of brutal political repression and gulag labour camps.

Volgograd, a showcase of high-level industrialisation in the Soviet era, decked itself in banners and Russian flags on Sunday, as residents lined the streets in the crisp sunshine to greet Russia’s hugely popular president.

Posters proclaiming “A Stalingrad veteran lives here” were stuck to windows across the city.

But Putin limited his presence at the several day-long festivities to a couple of hours, shunning a hotel where an entire floor had been refurbished for him and skipping a military parade on the central square.

Before meeting the veterans, Putin visited Mamayev Kurgan, a hill where thousands of Soviet troops died trying to repel German attacks.

The hill is a major burial ground from the battle and is crowned with a 52-metre (170 foot)-tall metal and concrete statue to Mother Russia — one of the country’s landmarks — commemorating the Russians who died holding the city.—Reuters