The world with a rifle

The patriotic festival “Russians change the world” in St. Petersburg celebrated both the second anniversary of his and the day of the defender of the Fatherland. Six thousand people came

On February 23 and 24, visitors to the EXPOFORUM KVC were brought closer to the front: they showed military equipment, now involved in special operations, showed clothes, equipment and grocery sets for participants in Swake, taught to bandage wounds and provide first aid to the fighters on the battlefield ... and, of course, fed porridge with a stew, cooked on an improvised field kitchen. Everything is free. The only thing that was required was to leave his personal data on the festival’s website and get a “patriot ticket”.

The organizers of the festival - ANO “Event”, whose initiative two governments, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region supported the initiative - have not yet come to contact with reporters. The questions addressed to him by mail remained unanswered. But the place itself, selected for the event, - the EXPOFOUM, “The most modern platform in Europe and Russia, designed for 30 thousand spectators” (information from the official website), suggests that there were several more guests at the festival.

- For such a city as ours, there are few people here. So little that it’s even a shame ... And it was difficult to find the announcements of the festival, I myself would not have known about it, if my son never sent me a link, ”said the half-empty lobby of the exhibition pavilion, 55-year-old Elena, who came to the festival with children and grandchildren.

People in civilian clothes really made up less than half of all visitors. However, officials acted on the principle: we hope for patriots, but do not flatter it yourself.

For mass, several hundred students, cadets and cadets of St. Petersburg military universities and schools were adjusted to the Expoforum. In addition, students were brought from some regional schools and pensioners from boarding houses for elderly and disabled people.

The most intriguing exposition - the novelties of Russian military equipment - on the first day of the festival was not available for viewing. Armored cars, tanks (including the T-90M “Breakthrough”), a multi-purpose mobile communication complex “Redut” and other exhibits stood in front of the pavilion, covered with huge canvas covers. The military guarding them explained to the “new” that the organizers saved the demonstration of these achievements for the second day.

And on February 23, visitors were offered to admire an exhibition of painting on the theme of the Great Patriotic War and the exhibition of photographs and portraits “Leningrad family - the family of heroes” dedicated to a special military operation. Documentary films were demonstrated: “I want silence”, “I went to war”, “Wives”. And on the main stage of the festival, the military-patriotic performance “We are invincible”, brought to St. Petersburg, was shown by the director from Orenburg Pavel Kashtanov. The production finally connected the Great Patriotic War and hostilities in Ukraine. Kashtanov himself, presenting his work, said: “This is a very powerful performance, one of my best, it is based on the real events of the Second World War and his.”

But even despite such a “advertisement”, the audience (especially families with children) more strongly attracted real events in the pavilion. There, OMON fighters gave a hand-to-hand combat master class: they showed how to properly capture the enemy and how to break out of the capture, and the Rosgvardists taught to detain dangerous criminals. Women from various volunteer associations invited to learn to make pillows for wounded soldiers, weave camouflage nets, pour trench candles. The volunteers of the “Sew Winpers” movement taught to sew fleece sweaters, T -shirts, bedding, etc.

“All this will go to the zone later,” Olga explained, a seamstress from “We Sew the Wall of Peter,” the mother of two sons. - My husband does not participate in a special operation, but there are many of his friends. Of course, I have very little time, small children - 3 and 5 years old. But if there is a desire, there is always time.

“Some women come, they don’t even know how to sew it, but they want to help,” the girlfriend of Olga Ekaterina, the mother of four sons, standing next to him. - But everyone who is in motion has such a motto: “I can’t, but I will learn”! For the sake of our husbands and sons, we are ready for anything.

Katya wipes a tear. One of her sons has been participating in a special operation for a year and a half. Now lies with the third wound in the hospital, but after discharge it is going to the front again:

- He had his own there, he cannot leave them.

“We started weaving camouflage networks in June 2023,” 74-year-old Valentina Vinogradova told New, “new”. - At the temple, they gave us a small room, dark, stuffy, without windows, but there is no other, we weave it there. The business is voluntary: whoever wants, he comes to help. At first, only two or three pensioners went. But recently, young women sometimes began to come. It became easier. We accelerated in work ...

Macarons, cookies, tea, coffee, canned goods from other volunteer associations were laid out at the stands next door, who believe that the daily bread is even more necessary for their participants.

Women collect humanitarian aid and offer to participate in this in any way: to buy medicines and dressings, bring buckwheat or doshirak ... It is more convenient and fastest to transfer money.

In a favorable place, in the middle of all the stands in the Expoforum, they defeated the tent - a mobile selection point for military service under a contract. The employees of the military registration and enlistment offices of the military enlistment office are convinced: first of all, the front needs the fighters themselves. However, on February 23, a record of volunteers was by no means briskly.

During the first day of the festival, the “new” mobile points told the “new”, five people replenished the ranks of the Russian army, another 25 promised to come later.

By the evening of February 24, it was said to reporters at the military service selection point that about a thousand people had already signed contracts. If so, then almost every sixth guest of the festival decided to go to military service: according to the results of the event, the leadership of Expoforum reported about six thousand visitors.

Saint Petersburg