Russia celebrated a holiday on Friday honouring the military, with President Vladimir Putin laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier while communist opponents held protests to criticise what they say is the lamentable treatment of the armed forces and their veterans.
Putin’s new defence minister - a former furniture store manager and tax collection chief with little military background - praised those who "have dedicated their lives to the noble work of serving their homeland" and vowed in a televised Defenders of the Fatherland Day message to continue efforts to modernise the military.
Because Soviet society was highly militarised and service is still mandatory for men - though many escape it - the holiday has come to honour Russian men in general, mirroring another Soviet-era holiday, International Women’s Day, in early March.
For Communists and other leftists angry at the course Russia has charted since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the holiday is a chance to criticise Putin’s government by drawing attention to difficult, sometimes barbaric conditions in the military, which is plagued by corruption and abuse of young conscripts.
Braving temperatures of minus 20 Celsius, a few thousand protesters marched down Moscow’s main street and held a rally near a monument to Karl Marx, calling for better pay, pensions and benefits for servicemen and veterans.
Many held red flags with Soviet hammer-and-sickle symbols; a few clutched portraits of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Earlier, Putin greeted generals and solemnly adjusted a ribbon on a wreath placed by honour guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier just outside the Kremlin’s red brick wall, afterward holding his bare hands over his ears to ward off the cold.
Putin has boasted of Russia’s military might and Defenders of the Fatherland Day was made into a day off in 2002, the second year of his presidency.
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