In the Military parade on May 9th 2015 – the 70th anniversary of the “Russian patriotic victory” against the Nazis – Wladimir Putin he turned the celebration into his personal triumph. During the passage of Regiment of the Immortals, the President of Russia, writes the Corriere della Sera, broke the rigid Brezhnev ceremonial and left the stage, mingling with the crowd and showing the photograph of his father, who was decorated and disabled in the conflict. On this occasion, in 2012, a group of journalists from the Siberian Tomsk television channel TV2 came up with the idea of letting the families of soldiers who fought in World War II parade with pictures of their loved ones. An idea that was enthusiastically embraced by everyone, including the All-Russian Popular Front (Fpp), a big supporter of Putin.
In the following years there was a change and the initiative to also bring to the parade the portraits of the soldiers who had taken part in the parade Fighting in Donbass 2014-15 and into Syria. But now things have changed. The regiment’s new spokesman said that relatives of soldiers who died during the “special military operation” in Ukraine could also take part in the parade, and the same request was made by Aleksandr Gusev, governor of Voronezh region, which borders Donbass. posed. At this point, the organizers parted ways.
On the official site of the regiment In fact, people distanced themselves from this suggestion: “Ten years ago we formulated the principles that we still adhere to today. The Immortal Regiment is a free and voluntary manifestation of family remembrance, it is a patriotic and not a state initiative, it is apolitical and civic, alien to any ideology, because no ideology can be greater than the idea of peace, for the millions of people from different countries gave their lives.Unfortunately, we are witnessing many phenomena that undermine the original meaning of the initiative, and that is why we no longer believe that it is possible to join this initiative “. Sergey Lapenkov, one of the three founding journalists, added: “Few know that there have been two sides to this war throw the great-grandchildren of what we today call the immortal regiment. Here I think so our great-grandparents maybe they would cursed for what’s going on.” TV2, the godmother of the Immortals Regiment, had spoken out against the war and was shut down in early March.