Russian President Vladimir Putin again this year organized a concert event to celebrate the anniversary of Crimea’s annexation to the Russian Federation, which ended with the traditional address to the nation, in which the Russian President reiterated his maximum commitment and support to Muscovites Troops in their “special military intervention” against Ukraine. However, not everything went smoothly when the event was broadcast on Rossiya-24, the Russian state television channel, with Putin’s speech not only interrupted by several pauses, but suddenly interrupted, and in its place the performance of the Russian cantatas Oleg Gazmanov became aired. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti agency that the interruption in transmission was caused by a “technical failure of the server”. Immediately after the Russian President’s speech was interrupted, the monologue was retransmitted in full, without interruptions or “technical failures”. But not only.
Doubts about the number of spectators in the stadium
The event took place in front of 200,000 people at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, according to the Russian Interior Ministry. The same stadium hosted the final of the Men’s World Cup in 2018, but it has an official maximum capacity of about 81,000. The ground floor is excluded from the capacity calculation, but this is where the stage was located where the various artists performed and where Putin addressed his speech to the nation. As a result, it is unlikely that 200,000 people could have entered the stadium. Furthermore, according to testimonies collected by Sota reporters outside the stadium, some attendees at the event stated that they were “loaded onto a bus” and “taken to the stadium.”
The young women who will be in the stands in both 2021 and 2022
However, during the broadcast of the event, some spectators appeared in the stands of the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, who were also present at the celebrations marking the anniversary of Crimea’s annexation to the Russian Federation last year. But what stood out was not so much the presence of the same people, but the doubts about their clothing, which was completely identical to that of the previous year. This would indicate a re-use of some footage from the celebrations in 2021, which would have been re-used for broadcasting the celebrations. There are mainly two cases. In the first we observe two young people, one with a blue mask and next to another young woman with a pink sweatshirt, present both at the 2021 event (here the video from last year, minute 0.47) and at the concert of this one . year (minute 55.36 of this video). But they are not the only ones. Two other women, one blonde and the other brunette, with a mask and a silver duvet, appeared in both the 2021 broadcast (in this video, minute 4.19) and the 2022 event (here the video, minute 55.29) . . After the event actually took place, as witnessed by the spectators outside the stadium, the hypothesis is plausible that the 2021 images of the stands were reused as what is professionally defined as a “cover” by the director, during the broadcast of the concert event.
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