By Richard Balmforth and Natalia Zinets KIEV (Reuters) - Armoured vehicles and soldiers, some of them hardened in battle, paraded on Kiev's main square on Sunday to mark Independence Day in a defiant show of the military force Ukraine's government hopes will defeat pro-Russian separatists in the east. Soldiers, some of whom were due to head directly to the front in the war against the separatists, staged a marchpast before Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko who told them in a speech that the war they were fighting was a war of independence that would go into the history books. Kiev's Independence Square - known locally as the 'Maidan' and which was the crucible of street protests that toppled a Moscow-backed leader and precipitated the separatist rebellions in the east - was bedecked with the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine. Programme coordinators said the 1,500 service personnel taking part included about 120 men who had already seen action on the eastern front in areas near the rebel-strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk.
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