“An absolutely unacceptable threat was growing, and directly on our borders,” he claimed. Vladimir Putin’s speech in Moscow concentrated on how NATO had allegedly built up a military presence in Ukraine – and that the Ukrainian government had declared an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. But the Kremlin, it seems, decided to focus on justifying the invasion of Ukraine, though rumours of mobilisation continue. Many feared big announcements on 9 May, including mass or partial mobilisation. Thompson novel Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.At the official level, Russia’s Victory Day looks to have been a souped-up affair with symbols of the war on Ukraine.
“We had two bags of grass, 75 mescaline tablets, five sheets of acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and grandpa’s ashes,” one user wrote, alluding to a famous passage from the Hunter S. The video was largely met with ridicule on Twitter.
Yury Degtyaev, the founder of My Duck’s Vision film studio, wrote on VKontakte that he came up with the idea during a “ holotropic breathing” session. The video, which had been viewed more than 230,000 times on YouTube before being made private on May 6, was apparently made as part of a media campaign in advance of a still-unknown film. Anya draws swastikas with the ashes as she explains how her elder fought fascists. While tracing images through the ashes with her finger, she describes her great-grandfather’s World War II heroics. She then sits over a backlit surface with black material scattered across. She shows an urn that she says holds his ashes. Ten-year-old Anya explains at the start that her great-grandfather died last year and that she would like to tell his life story. The YouTube channel that originally published the video first disabled the comments section, which was full of critical remarks, and later took it down completely.īut another video posted to YouTube took the connection of children to death a step further. Some were appalled, saying the video propagated the notion that children should die in the name of their motherland. “That’s not important,” the ghost boy answers, looking back. The boy says he worked in an artillery plant before joining guerrilla fighters and perishing during a mission.Īs he walks away from the kids, a girl asks: "Hey, is dying scary?" When a group of young children encounters the ghost, he somberly explains that his father went to war and fascists executed his mother.
Russia’s May 9 Victory Day is a major holiday and source of pride for authorities and citizens alike.Įveryone is given an official day off in honor of the occasion and schoolchildren are encouraged to “voluntarily” attend military parades, organize concerts for local veterans, and participate in official celebrations.īut this year, some children are being pushed to take that pride to bizarre lengths.Ī group of young filmmakers in Samara, for instance, showed off their patriotism by producing a Victory Day-themed sketch involving the ghost of a 10-year-old boy dressed in a Soviet military uniform.