A human flood in Moscow
BENOIT VITKINE / THE WORLD
For the city of Moscow alone, tens, even hundreds of thousands of people marched as part of the “immortal regiment” honoring the memory of World War II veterans. This initiative, created in the city of Tomsk, Siberia, in the mid-2010s, has become an essential moment of the May 9 celebrations and is very popular among the population.
Despite the rain, a huge crowd was in attendance in Moscow after a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19. We see Russian flags and red flags, countless military hats, also on the heads of children, and a sea of curved portraits – of relatives who fought between 1941 and 1945 or suffered from the war.
“It was my great-great-grandfather who was a soldier,” says Piotr, 12, with a kepi on his head and a black photo of a certain Oleg Artemenko on the bench. We must remember what our ancestors did for us so that we could live. »
The “Special Military Operation” launched on February 24 gives the event a special flavor this year, but in a discreet, almost secondary way. Organizers had warned that attendees could wear portraits of soldiers fighting in Ukraine if they wished, but few are visible.
BENOIT VITKINE / THE WORLD
Also, very few participants wear “Z” badges, although they are distributed along the procession by volunteers. This “special ops” symbol is far less popular with the crowd than the country’s orange and black St. as a consensual symbol.
“I don’t want to mix the two, the memory of our grandparents and politics,” explains a woman in her 50s, who says, however, “I personally support whatever the President is doing to protect us.”
Many in the crowd freely hum or sing old military or pop songs broadcast by sound systems, moments of folk community unimaginable anywhere else but in Russia. Between each song, in the few moments of silence, the crowd sings with equal energy a cry rooted firmly in the present, this one: “Russia, Russia! »
Benoît Vitkine (Moscow, correspondent)