The exhibition Victory 1945 will be running until May 12, 2005 at the Manchester central library.
The exhibition features over 50 wartime photographs from the archives of the Soviet Information Bureau, RIA Novosti's predecessor. The exhibition is divided into three sections, the defense of Leningrad, Soviet-British cooperation during World War II and Europe's liberation from Nazism.
Two Russian veterans from St. Petersburg (Manchester's twin city), Valentina Leonenko, 79, and Yuri Kuchiyev, 85, were invited to the opening ceremony.
The Balalaika children's band from Manchester will give a concert at the ceremony. After that, guests will lay flowers to the war memorial at the central library.
The exhibition Weapons of Victory opened in Egyptian capital Cairo.
Archive images of weapons and military hardware of the victorious Soviet Army are shown at the Russian Cultural Center.
Some samples of Soviet small arms, as well as Soviet orders and medals are exhibited at the Egyptian Armory Museum in downtown Cairo.
Machine-guns and submachine-guns which Joseph Stalin sent to King Farouk I of Egypt in the spring of 1945 are exhibited in the presidential Abdin Palace.
The monarch thanked Stalin "for the remarkable Soviet weapons, which enriched my military museum."
The Soviet embassy in Cairo handed Stalin's gift to the king.
Egypt declared war on Germany in February 1945 but the Egyptian army did not participate in military operations. In October-November 1943 the Egyptian town of El Alamein saw the major battle in Africa between the British Army and German-Italian troops under General-Field Marshal Rommel's command.
During this battle the Italian-German troops lost 55,000 soldiers, 320 tanks and about 1,000 guns. Great Britain lost 13,500 soldiersand 432 tanks. The victory at El Alamein was the first significant success of British troops in the South African campaign of 1940-1943.
