ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION).br br STORY: Armoured vehicles and soldiers, some of them hardened in battle, paraded on Kiev's main square on Sunday (August 24) to mark Independence Day in a defiant show of the military force Ukraine's government hopes will defeat pro-Russian separatists in the east.br br 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.br br Armoured vehicles armed with anti-tank weapons and machine-guns and trucks towing missile systems followed behind the columns of soldiers.br br 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.