The weather was not too happy - it was drizzling, even the air unit in the parade was canceled.
It’s good that we had time to admire the seventh in the bright sun and clear sky.
Headed, as usual, to Pushkinskaya.
I thought that the exit would already be closed, I would get to Belorusskaya, go to Pushkinskaya and go home.
And they still let us out, although it was already the second hour.
Here are the first met participants of the march on Strastnoe

Gone through the frame

People are walking along Tverskaya from Mayakovskaya - Belorusskaya - Dynamo.
While free, we line up and go down to Red Square.

For those who arrived a long time ago and managed to get hungry - a field kitchen.
They also distribute water.

The column is gradually compacted.
Footage of satellites in procession
Young people

At the house at seven on Tverskaya we stopped to wait for the march on Red Square.
From time to time in the column thundered Hurray! - starting from below from Okhotny and going up, beyond Tverskaya-Yamskaya. It sounded amazingly powerful. Pleased.
The loudspeakers played songs from the war years, very old and newer.
They sang along, including the youth.
It started to rain harder, even with snow there was a short-term charge, literally a few minutes,
and then the sky began to clear.
At about 2:50 pm, our part of the column began to move, and they walked without stopping.

The Historical Museum column flowed around in two streams, I walked on the right

There are a lot of policemen

And even more Victory volunteers

It's all together

Spectators

The police are urging - Come in, come in, do not linger!

Varvarka is blocked, we go to Kitay-gorod by a roundabout way under the bridge and along the embankment.
It's impossible to get lost.

It should be mentioned that under the bridge and further up to the metro itself, toilets were installed in large numbers, there were a maximum of two or three people in a queue.
This is not for us May Day demonstrations in Leningrad, where the one and only was waiting
suffering at the Champ de Mars.
:)

The nearest entrances - at Varvarka which are overcrowded, went to the one at Ilyinka.
On the way, two monuments clicked

It was interesting to participate in the march of the Immortal Regiment.

“Last year I took part in the procession in Moscow, this time I will participate in the procession in Belgorod,” Daria Yagodintseva, winner of last year’s Ambassador of Victory contest, told VZGLYAD newspaper, commenting on the start of preparations for the new Immortal Regiment campaign.

In Russia, as well as in some states of near and far abroad, preparations for the Immortal Regiment campaign have started. By tradition, it is scheduled for May 9 in Moscow on Red Square and other cities of the country. The competition of volunteers "Ambassador of Victory" is timed to coincide with it. One of the winners of last year's competition, Daria Yagotintseva from Belgorod, told the VZGLYAD newspaper that she would take part in the procession this year as well.

“This action is very significant and especially for me. I have been participating in it for several years now,” she said. “I just recently discovered information about my great-grandfather, I did not immediately find it. He fought and went missing during the war,” Yagotintseva said.

Daria's grandfather Ivan Kuzmich Yagotintsev, according to her, was a 13-year-old child during the war and helped the front-line soldiers with everything he could. Daria managed to catch her grandfather and always listened with interest to his every story about the history of the country. Grandfather, who had worked as a driver all his adult life, was especially proud of the fact that he personally drove the announcer Levitan himself when Yuri Borisovich came to one of the anniversaries in the Belgorod region.

Recall that the annual competition "Ambassadors of Victory" determines the 200 best volunteers from 85 regions of the country. The winners become the organizers of the key events of the May 9 celebration - the Victory parades and the Immortal Regiment procession in Moscow and St. Petersburg, RIA Novosti reports.

Since 2015, Muscovites can print a photo of their hero in A4 format for free at every My Documents public service center. To do this, you need to come with a picture to any of the 128 public service centers. In addition, in the centers of public services, every Muscovite can publish memories of his veteran and his photo in the electronic book of memory "Immortal Regiment - Moscow".

"All materials - photographs, memoirs, letters - will be carefully scanned and placed in an electronic memory book, and the originals will immediately be returned to their owners," Komsomolskaya Pravda was explained earlier in the press service of the Moscow public services centers. - Everyone can enter information about the participants of the Great Patriotic War themselves without leaving home through the website of the Immortal Regiment - Moscow project. When registering, the user receives a login, password and the ability to edit the page about the hero of his family, supplement it with information and photos.

Now the Immortal Regiment - Moscow electronic book of memory contains more than 186 thousand stories about the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. The Immortal Regiment is a procession of volunteers along the central streets of their cities with portraits of relatives-front-line soldiers. The purpose of the action is to keep in every family the memory of the participants of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, of everyone who, not sparing his life, forged victory over the enemy, fought for the liberation of the Motherland.

On May 9, 2017, over 850,000 Muscovites and guests of the capital marched along Red Square in the ranks of the Immortal Regiment to honor the memory of their ancestors, the VZGLYAD newspaper reported. Among the participants in the action, as in 2015-16, was President Vladimir Putin. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, last year the "Immortal Regiment" was held in 79 cities of the near and far abroad, in Russia alone more than 7.8 million people took part in it.

The organizers of the action express their confidence that over a million people will take part in the procession in the capital this year. Thus, the "Immortal Regiment 2018" in Moscow can set a new record for the number of participants.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

What's new was shown at the military parade on May 9 in Moscow

Victory Day in 2017 turned out to be extremely cold. The temperature dropped to almost zero, the sky was covered with low clouds.

“At the historical parade 72 years ago, the weather was exactly the same, it was gloomy and cold,” a correspondent of one of the federal channels rehearsed in front of the TV camera.

At that moment, light snow fell from the sky.

Due to bad weather, the aviation part of the parade was cancelled. On the eve of the holidays, the weather was sunny and warm, and at rehearsals a string of helicopters, fighters and heavy bombers gathered crowds of onlookers on the streets, but on May 9 the planes did not appear in the sky.

The night before, snow began to fall in Moscow. The Moscow authorities and the Ministry of Defense promised to disperse the clouds, but the bad weather turned out to be stronger.

Military aircraft can fly in any weather, but it would be too risky to assemble in the sky outside Moscow, to build up in a tight formation based on visual contact.

• The "Immortal Regiment" marched through the center of London
• Victory Day in Kyiv: a holiday with skirmishes in the streets
• The Russian Defense Ministry spoke about the air parade, which was not

The parade under the cold gray sky, without the final roar of aircraft engines overhead, turned out to be unexpectedly short, crumpled, despite the abundance of tanks, self-propelled guns and intercontinental ballistic missiles inevitable at such a parade.

When the last Boomerang armored personnel carrier left the square, a military tractor drove out from the shadow of the Execution Ground onto it - it was hiding there in case any car stalled in the middle of the parade, as it happened during the rehearsal in 2015.

This tractor ended the military parade instead of the bombers, hastily turning into a driveway near the Spasskaya Tower.

Image copyright AFP Image caption The newest tank T-14 "Armata" at the parade on Red Square.

"Immortal Regiment"

The procession of the "Immortal Regiment", which began a few hours later, on the contrary, seemed bright and impressively large. It was like this: this year, according to official figures, about 750 thousand people took to the streets in Moscow with portraits of relatives who died during the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was at the head of the column.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Victory Day in Moscow was celebrated with a military parade and a procession of the "Immortal Regiment"

“Hundreds of beautiful and strict faces around, looking at you from black and white portraits. When I look at them, my throat catches, always. Thank you,” writes Facebook user Oksana Mishchenko.

“I joined the ranks of the immortal regiment. It would be high time - after all, my grandfather reached Berlin. It’s a pity that we didn’t have time to get to know each other. Thank you for this feat, it will always be in our hearts!” Yulia Chuvaeva, a Facebook user, wrote at the bottom.

For the second year in a row, the two main events on Victory Day in Moscow - the military parade and the procession of the "Immortal Regiment" - are separated in time and place (in 2015 they were part of one event on Red Square).

Image copyright EPA Image caption More than 700,000 people reportedly participated in the procession of the Immortal Regiment.

For the second year in a row, it passes a few hours after the noise of tank engines finally subsides over the center. This seems logical: the two main components of the holiday are essentially completely different.

The Immortal Regiment appeared in 2011 at the initiative of journalists from the independent Tomsk television channel TV2, which was closed under pressure from local authorities.

Back in Soviet times, war veterans gathered in the center of Moscow on Victory Day, met with fellow soldiers, and remembered their dead friends.

This tradition, also born spontaneously, without instructions from above, existed for many years, as long as veterans could come to these meetings. However, over time, they became less and less.

The idea of ​​Tomsk journalists arose just when living human emotions, memories that day became sorely lacking.

Image copyright Nikolsky Alexey Image caption Vladimir Putin leads the Immortal Regiment procession for the third year in a row

Under the direction of

The first procession took place in 2012 in Tomsk, and in a short time became so famous that by 2015 it was already quite officially held in Moscow.

When this movement became really popular, the Russian authorities tried not only to help this action, but to lead it. Actually, for the third year in a row, President Vladimir Putin himself is in the forefront.

The "Immortal Regiment" began to be prepared in advance, organized, and gathered people for it; among homemade portrait posters, more and more professionally made.

Image copyright TACC/Fadeichev Sergey Image caption The Russian authorities decided to take the action "Immortal Regiment" under their wing

On May 9, in the morning, there were many people with stalls selling caps on the streets, they began to let the procession through the metal detectors. In 2017, Immortal Regiment meetings were held in schools at the initiative of administrations and even in Russian embassies abroad.

This manifested itself back in 2015, when many on social networks began to complain that people who clearly did not know whose portraits they were carrying took part in the procession. “Quantitative indicators are not as important as the meaning of what is happening. And there was no need to mobilize someone in advance. People would have been behind the eyes anyway,” one of the authors of the idea Sergey Lapenkov from Tomsk said then in an interview with the BBC.

On the one hand, it seems that the authorities are trying to organize and even initiate a movement, which in itself is much larger and larger than that which can be assembled by administrative methods.

On the other hand, many fear that, as a result, a sincere desire to remember the dead relatives is thereby eroded and vulgarized, turning into a kind of mass flash mob.

Image copyright TASS/Pochuev Mikhail Image caption People from different parts of the former USSR took part in the celebration of Victory Day in Moscow

"Enthusiasm, sincerity, a real desire of people who remember the stories of grandfathers or fathers about the war, who are proud that they have a photograph of their father, grandfather, mother, grandmother hanging on their wall, who want to go out and show that yes, ours also fought, also died when it all turns into an order from above, of course it degenerates. How long it will degenerate, fizzle out, we don’t know," journalist Nikolai Svanidze told the BBC Russian Service.

Many others agree with him, who were embarrassed by the desire of the state to participate in the action, which was born on the initiative "from below".

However, so far there are no visible signs that this idea is fizzling out. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of many cities with portraits of their dead relatives.

On May 9, the Immortal Regiment procession will take place on Red Square - a civil initiative to perpetuate the feat of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, preserve the memory of the valor and heroism of the people, as well as patriotic education of present and future generations.

Participation in the action implies that every citizen who honors the memory of his veteran relative goes to the Victory Parade with his photograph, taking a place in the Immortal Regiment column.

To join the procession of the Immortal Regiment, you just need to come with a portrait of your relative - a participant in the Great Patriotic War, who contributed to the victory over fascism, both at the front and in the rear.

Driving route

From the metro station "Dinamo" along Leningradsky Prospekt, Tverskaya Street, Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street, through Okhotny Ryad, Manezhnaya and Red Square. Further, the procession column is distributed along the Moskvoretskaya Embankment and the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge.

The history of the action began in 2007 in Tyumen and was called the "Parade of Winners". It began to be called the “Immortal Regiment” from the moment the 2012 march was held in Tomsk, and already in 2013 it spread to 120 cities. In 2014, residents of 500 cities in seven countries took to the streets with portraits of front-line soldiers. Since 2015, the action has officially become nationwide.

Photo: Press Service of the Mayor and the Government of Moscow. Evgeny Samarin

Participants of the commemorative procession carried portraits of relatives and friends, veterans of the Great Patriotic War, through the center of the capital.

The patriotic action "Immortal Regiment" in Moscow set a record this year. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, more than 750 thousand people took part in it. They carried photographs of their relatives and friends who worked in the rear and fought at the front.

The participants started from the Dynamo metro station. The column of many thousands proceeded along Leningradsky Prospekt, Tverskaya and Tverskaya-Yamskaya streets, through Okhotny Ryad, Manezhnaya and Red Square.

The participants were joined by Russian President Vladimir Putin and. The head of state came out with a portrait of his father, a front-line soldier, and the Mayor of Moscow carried a photo poster with images their relatives who died in the Great Patriotic War.

Sergei Sobyanin noted that the action "Immortal Regiment" is part of the national memory that each of us carries within himself. “There is no such family in Russia in which relatives, relatives in the war, did not die, did not participate in these battles. For me personally, it is very important that I can join this feeling - a sense of solidarity, a sense of common memory, a sense of patriotism, and pay a debt, a tribute to those people who died for us, for the future of Russia, ”he said.

“In our father’s family, four brothers went to the front. Two of them did not return. One of them died in Ukraine, defending Kharkov. The second died in the battle near Moscow, near Rzhev in February 1942. So for me, this is also a holiday, a close, dear holiday that the whole family remembers,” the Mayor of Moscow added.

Sergei Sobyanin also thanked everyone who took part in the procession, despite the inclement weather. “Hundreds of thousands came. All Tverskaya is filled with people. We try to create a holiday for them, organizing concert venues. Even this year, kitchens, tea, soldier’s porridge were installed in such a way as to at least create a festive mood for people in this inclement weather, ”he said.

According to the Mayor of Moscow, festive events continue at all major venues: in parks, squares in the city center and in districts. “In total, somewhere around 140 events, including the largest ones will be on Poklonka, where will it take place concert. Well, in the evening, as always, a big fireworks display. I invite all Muscovites to take part in the festive events,” said the Moscow Mayor.

The Immortal Regiment campaign has been running since 2007. For the first time in Tomsk, on Victory Day, local residents took to the streets of the city with photo portraits of their relatives-front-line soldiers. More than 6,000 Tomsk citizens took part in the solemn procession. In 2015, about 12 million people took part in the Immortal Regiment campaign across Russia. Last year, twice as many participants came out with photo portraits of their veteran relatives - about 24 million people, and the action itself was held in 50 countries. In Moscow . Muscovites and guests of the capital then carried over a million portraits of the defenders of the Motherland.

You can also perpetuate the memory of your relative - a participant in the Great Patriotic War, tell about his life, show photos on the website "Immortal Regiment. Moscow" . There are already more than 178 thousand entries in the electronic Book of Memory about the participants of the Great Patriotic War and home front workers.