MOSCOW — Russia marked the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany on Wednesday with soldiers bearing hammer-and-sickle banners goose-stepping through Red Square and President Vladimir Putin sending a veiled warning to Estonia over its relocation of a Soviet war memorial.

On one of the most cherished holidays in the Russian calendar, veterans bedecked with medals joined officials across the country to lay flowers at graves and bask in the memory of the 1945 victory, one of the most glorious feats in the nation's troubled past.

An estimated 27 million people died during the conflict known to most Russians as the Great Patriotic War and much of the western part of the country was ravaged during four years of battles.

Speaking from a podium in front of Lenin's Mausoleum, Putin hailed Victory Day as "the holiday of huge moral importance and unifying power."

He also honored the contribution of Western allies to the defeat of Adolf Hitler's Germany but appeared to take a swipe at the United States, saying that the world now sees threats to peace "based on the same disrespect for human life, claims to global exclusiveness and dictate, just as it was in the Third Reich."

He did not specify to whom he was referring, but the comment echoed recent sharp criticism by him of the United States for an allegedly aggressive foreign policy and Kremlin objections to U.S. plans to deploy elements of a missile defense system in eastern Europe.

"I am convinced that common responsibility and equitable partnership offer the only tool for rebuffing these challenges and repelling any attempts to unleash new armed conflicts or undermine global security," Putin said.

Putin also alluded to Russian anger over last month's removal of a Red Army memorial from a square in Tallinn, capital of the former Soviet republic of Estonia.

The monument's shift to a military cemetery and the planned reburial of Soviet soldiers interred at the square set off days of rioting by ethnic Russians in Estonia and drew outrage and threats of economic retaliation from Russia.

He did not mention Estonia by name, but condemned those who "are desecrating monuments to war heroes, and in doing that are insulting their own people and sowing enmity and a new distrust between nations and people."

Estonia, like its Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania, pays tribute to the Red Army for driving out the Nazis, but also portrays Soviet troops as occupiers who helped keep it under communist control for a half century.

In Tallinn, ethnic Russians observed the anniversary with peaceful celebrations.