Eight years after Russian troops seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, the event is being commemorated in Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium with flag-waving crowds and special lessons in schools. In front of the crowd, President Vladimir Putin made a special appearance.
Workers for the state claimed they had been ordered to participate. Teachers held lessons in schools to commemorate the “Crimean spring.” The Russian army has seized towns and cities along Ukraine’s south coast from its bases in Crimea. Mr. Putin has used the anniversary to emphasize his love for the motherland on several occasions.
Officials claimed that over 200,000 people had gathered at the stadium, but the figures could not be confirmed. The stadium holds an official capacity of 81,000 people, but there were large crowds outside as well. President Putin praised the military for demonstrating Russian unity, saying: “When necessary, they act as brothers, shielding each other from bullets with their bodies. We haven’t seen such unity in a long time.” He also repeated the lie that Russian troops were preventing genocide in eastern Ukraine.
In what the Kremlin later described as a technical glitch, his address on almost every major state TV channel abruptly cut to singer Oleg Gazmanov belting out the words “Forward, Russia” as he spoke on stage. Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, spoke at the event, as did Margarita Simonyan, a top state television journalist, and Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry.
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