About 200 veterans, all of them around 90 years old, have been taking part in a parade commemorating the Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad. It is 70 years since the 200-day battle, one of the bloodiest in history, ended in defeat for Nazi Germany.

Some of today's Russian troops took part in the parade, wearing World War II-era winter uniforms.

A T-34 tank, one of the most successful weapons of the war, was also on display.

In the late summer and autumn of 1942, crack troops of Hitler's Sixth Army had pushed deep into the city, much of which was already rubble after massive air raids by the Luftwaffe. Here German soldiers enter a captured factory.

The city's defenders, like this Soviet mortar crew, put up stiff resistance but were rolled back until they held only a strip of land between the Germans and the River Volga.

Alexei Stefanov, seen here in a photo taken during the battle in 1942, commanded a Soviet reconnaissance platoon. He witnessed soldiers shielding women and children from German bullets with their own backs, to allow them to reach ferry boats on the river.

By 12 November, when this photo was taken, the Germans were still a force to be reckoned with, their infantry backed by armour in the city's streets. Barely a week later, all of that was to change.

The Soviets launched Operation Uranus on 19 November, a great pincer movement which snared the Sixth Army and their Axis allies. Here Soviet soldiers run past a wrecked German tank near Stalingrad on 30 November.

Unable to retreat and facing a determined enemy, a hard winter and a shortage of supplies, the Sixth Army was doomed. Here German prisoners face the camera in Stalingrad on 20 December.

By mid-January, when this photo was taken, the city's pulverised streets were barely recognisable from the air.

With the German surrender, Hitler lost a whole army and was never to regain the military initiative on the Eastern Front in a meaningful way. Despite its own huge losses, the USSR was buoyed by its victory. Here a lone German soldier hobbles across rubble in the city.

The combined military and civilian death toll in the battle was as great as 1.5 million. A huge memorial complex on the Mamayev Kurgan hill, with its giant Mother of the Nation statue, preserves the memory of the Soviet defenders' sacrifices....