Billboards praising Josef Stalin for leading the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany are to go up across Moscow as Russia marks 65 years since the end of World War II, news agencies said Wednesday. Rights groups immediately denounced the billboard campaign, which the Moscow organisers said was launched at the request of veterans groups. 'We are going to protest against this in every way possible,' Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, told Interfax. 'Those who want to put up portraits of Stalin in Moscow would like to see a return to the state terror of the Stalinist period.' Lev Ponomarev, head of the Movement for Human Rights, said the billboard campaign was certain to spark protests. 'Advertising that glorifies Stalin is unacceptable,' he told RIA-Novosti. Stalin, who died in 1953, sent millions of people into the brutal Gulag prison system and launched a disastrous campaign to collectivise agriculture that sparked a massive famine. He is still admired by many Russians, however, largely due to his role in leading the Soviet Union to victory against Nazi Germany in 1945, which Russia commemorates each year on May 9 with military parades across the country. Last month a drinks factory in the southern Russian city of Volgograd announced plans to make a lemonade featuring Stalin on the label to celebrate the anniversary. In August last year, an inscription praising Stalin was restored in a Moscow metro station, sparking outrage from liberals. 