Russian nationalists carrying flags and banners during a May Day rally in Moscow yesterday. Photo: Tatyana Makeyeva/ReutersRussia staged a huge May Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square for the first time since the Soviet era yesterday, with workers holding banners proclaiming support for President Vladimir Putin after the seizure of territory from neighbouring Ukraine.
Thousands of trade unionists marched with Russian flags and flags of Putin’s ruling United Russia party onto the giant square beneath the Kremlin walls, past the red granite mausoleum of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin.
Many banners displayed traditional slogans for the annual workers’ holiday, such as “Peace, Labour, May”. But others were more directly political, alluding to the crisis in neighbouring former Soviet republic Ukraine, where Russian troops annexed the Crimea peninsula in March, precipitating the biggest confrontation with the West since the Cold War.
“I am proud of my country,” read one. “Putin is right,” said another.
Back in Moscow, Putin, unlike Soviet-era leaders, did not personally preside at the parade from atop Lenin’s mausoleum. But he carried out another tradition from those days by awarding “Hero of Labour” medals to five workers at a ceremony in the Kremlin. He revived the Stalin-era award a year ago.
The authorties are trying to drum up support by encouraging patriotic feelings
Putin has described the break-up of the Soviet Union as a tragedy and overturned decades of post-Cold War diplomacy in March by declaring Russia’s right to intervene in former Soviet countries to protect Russian speakers.
Laws have been changed to make it easier for Russia to annex territory from other former Soviet states and for inhabitants of other parts of the old Soviet Union to get Russian citizenship.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin told Rossiya 24 TV from Red Square that more than 100,000 people had marched through it.
“This is not by chance, because there is a patriotic uplift and a good mood in the country,” he said.
Russian TV also showed footage of a May Day parade in Crimea’s capital Simferopol, with Russian flags and banners reading “Crimea is Russia. Welcome home.”
“We are sure that the current patriotic uplift in Crimea will spill over into the whole Russian Federation,” Interfax news agency quoted Crimea’s pro-Moscow leader Sergei Aksyonov as telling journalists.
The intervention in Ukraine has been enormously popular in Russia. One opinion poll on Wednesday showed 82 percent support for Putin, his highest rating since 2010.
“Western sanctions won’t affect us. Crimea was historically part of Russia, and it’s only right that we’ve become whole again,” said Tatyana Ivanova, a worker at Moscow Housebuilding Factory No. 1 celebrating May Day with four colleagues.
Putin has also revived the Soviet-era practice of staging massive displays of military firepower on Red Square to mark May 9, the allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, one of the most important days in the Soviet and Russian calendars.
Meanwhile, however, historian Kirill Strakhov, 31, speaking on another square near Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, said yesterday, “The authorities are trying to drum up support by encouraging patriotic feelings. They ignore the fact that there are many difficult economic and geopolitical problems associated with the unification of Crimea.”
Putin has also revived the Soviet-era practice of staging massive displays of military firepower on Red Square to mark May 9, the allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, one of the most important days in the Soviet and Russian calendars.
Central Moscow streets have been partially closed in recent days as tanks and mobile rocket launchers rehearse for that parade next week.