‘We are team Putin’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gets patriotic welcome in Yekaterinburg

During a visit to Yekaterinburg on September 2, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was treated to a patriotic flash mob performed by employees of the wholesale company Sima-Land. The Sverdlovsk region’s Governor Evgeny Kuyvashev and Yekaterinburg businessman Andrey Simanovsky also attended the event.

More than 5,000 people took part in the flash mob, sporting t-shirts and baseball caps from the brand “Putin Team.” In unison, they waved their arms, clapped their hands, and danced to the song “Forward, Russia!” by Russian singer Oleg Gazmanov. At Simanovsky’s request, the Sima-Land employees shouted the slogans “We are United Russia” and “We are team Putin.”

Lavrov was pleased with the performance, noting that with companies like Sima-Land, Russia is “doomed to be self-reliant.”

In a separate comment, Lavrov highlighted the efforts of the female “performers”:

“I noticed that the girls on stage set the pace. [I have] one question: why just the girls? There should be, as our Western partners say, gender equality. But still, in the Russian tradition, a woman will always be the most respected.”

As TJournal recalls, Sima-Land employees released a video in support of Vladimir Putin in January 2021. In the clip, the employees shouted, “Putin is our president! Vladimir Vladimirovich, we are with you!” and marched to the song “They Beat Us, We Fly” by Russian-Uzbek singer Nargiz Zakirova.

In another pro-Putin video Sima-Land employees gathered together in the snow to form the phrase “Putin is our president.”