Many Russian localities have said they won’t be holding New Year’s festivities this year in order to donate the proceeds to the Kremlin’s effort to pay for frontline soldiers and their families. To support Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, Kaluga’s mayor cancelled the city’s New Year’s celebrations. Leaders in Tomsk, St. Petersburg, Yakutia, Yaroslval, and Nizhny Novgorod have also adopted similar steps.
Money will also be used to assist mobilising families;
The governor of Tomsk has said that funds earmarked for New Year’s festivities would also be utilised to aid the relatives of individuals the Kremlin mobilised. The New Year will still be celebrated in Moscow, but with a more subdued tone, according to Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.
There will be no music or fireworks on Red Square;
Moscow will have fewer festivities and activities to help direct part of its New Year’s expenditures to the soldiers fighting on the front lines. Officials may have changed their policies in response to the criticism they received after holding a grandiose fireworks show to commemorate the city’s 875th anniversary in September.
Russia’s last celebration at Red Square;
A week after celebrating what was viewed as a win for President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia has withdrew its forces from the Kharkiv Oblast portion of that country. The two actions’ visual impact marked the start of a significant and prolonged backlash against Putin’s campaign in Ukraine.
Winter will be harsh;
The Daily Beast’s Anna Nemtsova reports that Russian power outages and heating failures are already freezing people to death. She says President Vladimir Putin is choosing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars prosecuting an illegal war in Ukraine instead of helping his own citizens.
Due to Russian missile strikes, Ukrainians are experiencing power outages and heating shortages, while residents of Russia’s eastern republics and territories are freezing to death and being asked to provide the most support for the war, depriving these regions of their local labour forces and sending their young men to die in Ukraine. Government authorities may have chosen to skip New Year’s in order to seem to be improving the lives of their citizens in response to the mounting unrest in Russia’s remote areas.
Post Your Comments