Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart from Belarus on Tuesday unveiled a monument honoring the fallen Red Army soldiers who fought in one of the most bloody battles of World War II. Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko traveled to the village of Khoroshevo, just outside Rzhev, about 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) northwest of Moscow for a somber ceremony that involved goose-stepping troops laying wreaths to the towering figure of a soldier. The battle of Rzhev, in which the Red Army launched a series of offensives in 1942-1943 to dislodge the Wermacht from its positions close to Moscow, involved enormous Soviet losses from persistent, poorly prepared attacks against well-fortified Nazi positions.
