A woman visits the archeological site of Acropolis in Athens, Greece, on March 22, 2021. (Photo: Xinhua)

Greece was to mark 200 years since the start of its independence war with the Ottoman Empire on Thursday, with parades and ceremonies attended by foreign dignitaries, though the pandemic forced officials to scale back events.

With celebrations planned all over Greece and among diaspora communities overseas, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Wednesday the "rebirth of Greece" was "a special moment for all Hellenism."

Greece fought for nearly a decade for its independence from an empire that extended through the Balkans and modern-day Turkey to North Africa, coming out victorious thanks to military intervention by Britain, France and Russia.

The three allies from the conflict are among the countries to have sent military hardware for Thursday's celebrations.

Parades of tanks, artillery and overflying jets were to mark the occasion in the capital Athens, alongside mounted troops in traditional costumes from the 1821 conflict.

Among the foreign dignitaries attending are Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Britain's Prince Charles, with France represented by Defense Minister Florence Parly after President Emmanuel Macron pulled out.

"As the wellspring of Western civilization, Greece's spirit runs through our societies and our democracies," Charles said at a dinner at the presidential mansion on Wednesday.

"Without her, our laws, our art, our way of life, would never have flourished as they have."

Macron in an interview with Greek television on Wednesday referred to tensions between Greece and Turkey over their disputed maritime border.

Hostilities flared in 2020 when Ankara sent a research ship accompanied by a navy flotilla into waters near the Turkish coast that Greece asserts belongs to it - a claim the EU supports.

A cannon on Lycabettus Hill overlooking Athens will fire a salute of 21 shots before the foreign visitors lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Greece's foremost military monument, the defense ministry said.

Some 4,000 police, drones and snipers will be deployed in Athens, a police source said.

Sympathy for the cause of Greece in 1821 sparked a movement in Europe and the US known as Philhellenism, with proponents including former US president Thomas Jefferson, Russian author Alexander Pushkin and English poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.