how Vladimir Putin opened the World Youth Festival

On the second day of the World Youth Festival 2024 (WYF), its grand opening took place on the federal territory of Sirius. Participants from both friendly and unfriendly countries competed with each other in shouting out their names, learned the festival’s sign language and danced to Russian hits. But Russian President Vladimir Putin called on those gathered to be more serious: he reminded them that they are responsible for the future of the world and this is worth thinking about seriously in the coming week. According to the observations of a Kommersant correspondent, not all the guests were able to understand what they wanted from them yet – but everyone already enjoyed dancing.

The opening ceremony of the WSF took place on Saturday at the Big Ice Palace, built for the 2014 Winter Olympics. In fact, the festival started the day before – by the time of the official opening, a number of events had already taken place at its venues. It was possible to attend the opening only by special invitations, which were not enough for all the participants – the organizers claim that there were more than 20 thousand of them, half of them from abroad. Queues formed at the entrance to the Big Ice Palace: guests had to undergo a thorough search and part with bottles of water from their backpacks. Spectators who had overcome the limits approached piles of flags – “each country from which there are guests,” the volunteers explained. On the counter are the “most popular”: Tunisia, Congo, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Indonesia – “and Belarus is constantly running out,” the girls complained, laughing. Hidden behind the counter itself were many bags with flags from other countries; According to the organizers, 300 thousand people from 190 countries initially expressed their desire to participate – that is, literally from all over the globe. According to the volunteers, “you have to get into these bags a little less often, but you still have to.” Russian and festival flags were distributed to everyone all the way to the hall.

The start of the ceremony was scheduled for 4 o’clock in the afternoon, but the hall was already filled 40 minutes before. Those who came in advance were entertained by rapper Vakhtang and TV presenter Olympiada Teterich. They tried to teach the guests special WFM gestures: “I love”, “I dream”, “Thank you”. Mrs. Teterich waved her arms to Vakhtang’s beatboxing, interrupted by the sounds of the duduk.

When the simple movements seemed to be mastered, the presenters moved on to words: the foreign guests decided to first teach the word “cheese”.

“Cheese – cheese – cheese …” they repeated in a circle. “I can endlessly list how much cheese they make in Russia,” Olympiada Teterich said proudly and tried to move on to “happiness – happiness – happiness…”, but she failed, because the Belarusian delegation began to applaud something and chant: “Belarus !

Friendly shouts of the names of countries in Russian periodically filled the stands. In addition to Belarus, China and Moldova, for example, made themselves known loudly and clearly. At first they didn’t shout “Russia” – participants from the host country loudly told the world the names of their home cities and regions: “Adygea!”, “Novgorod!”, “Rostov!”… And only at the very end of the warm-up the national unification was still felt and it happened, and a multivocal chant was heard above the stands: “Russia!” Symbolically, immediately after this, the official ceremony began with the Russian anthem performed by a symphony orchestra conducted by Yuri Bashmet. The Bolivian guests quite successfully sang along with the orchestra next door to the Kommersant correspondent, waving their red-yellow-green tricolor.

The host of the main part of the ceremony turned out to be the disembodied Artificial Intelligence – that’s how he, in any case, introduced himself in the easily recognizable voice of Konstantin Khabensky. The artificial presenter allegedly came to Earth to find out how modern youth live and to help online university student, courier Andrey, decide on his life purpose. He met Adelina, a medical student, on the Internet.

“What a beautiful name you have,” the hero wrote to the girl. “Tatar,” she answered and sang a song about the difficulties of mastering the profession and chak-chak. Andrey did not reveal the origin of his name.

The heroes of the performance, after a series of omissions, rap compositions, remixes of Soviet hits of the 1980s and dance numbers, were to become a family in the plot. This topic has generally received a lot of attention, and it’s not for nothing that 2024 has been declared the Year of the Family in Russia. Stars, including Tatyana Navka, Laysan Utyasheva, Oleg Gazmanov, spoke from the screens about what family and home mean to them, and showed music videos about growing up in a family consisting of several generations. Artificial Intelligence with the voice of Konstantin Khabensky drew the right conclusions from all this and reflected on how important it is to love, dream and listen to oneself.

We came to the international theme in the middle of the ceremony. Touching videos about an Argentinean who brought his mother halfway around the world to WFU, and an Iranian studying Russian, were interrupted by reflections on national characteristics. In China, what they value most is work, and in Spain – friends and siesta, they explained from the screens, not without tenderness. This was followed by dances of the peoples of Russia and foreign delegations to ethnic music in a modern interpretation, after which the presenter wisely concluded how important the “multinational unity of humanity” is, and one of the heroes of the performance added that “we should all understand each other with our hearts.”

The theme of understanding with the heart was becoming relevant for some festival participants. The opening ceremony was translated into English and subtitles were shown on the screens. But whether this is really such an international language is still an open question. Volunteers told a Kommersant correspondent that the requirement to know English was not mandatory when selecting for the festival: “Foreign delegations have their own attaches, they know the language, but we all do it differently. But it doesn’t matter, most of the guests here have broken English, and we successfully explain ourselves with gestures and smiles.”

At some point, amid the romantic winking of flashlights in the dark stands, the audience was invited to join hands, and the entire audience obediently stood up and clasped their hands with their neighbors.

“Together we will share responsibility for the fate of the world,” the presenter’s voice instructed, accompanied by piercing music. The Kommersant correspondent shared responsibility with the guys from the delegations of Tatarstan and Belgorod – everyone together was a little embarrassed by the task at hand.

The degree of responsibility especially increased towards the end, when another recognizable voice sounded: Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on the screen. Without any command, everyone in the room stood again, as they did during the anthem at the beginning of the ceremony. “For younger generations there are no borders or dividing lines,” the president said. “You will communicate with those with whom you want to communicate, receive the knowledge and experience that you need.” He told the participants about the multinational people of Russia, united by common values: equality and justice, traditions of a strong family and mutual assistance, service to their Fatherland. “I know that these values ​​are shared by the absolute majority of the Earth’s inhabitants. Therefore, we must preserve and protect them together, realize our dreams together, help each other in order to improve the lives of billions, I want to emphasize this, billions of people,” continued Vladimir Putin. It is the younger generation, in his opinion, who knows what a safe world “should and can” be like. And the President of Russia ordered the festival participants to discuss its creation. Let us note that the festival organizers emphasize that at least some of the guests aged 18 to 35 years will begin to make decisions in their countries in the foreseeable future, and before taking on this, it does not hurt to get to know each other. Vladimir Putin, in any case, assured the audience that “for us a smile is not a duty mask, but a sincere expression of feelings,” and “if we give our word, we always keep it,” while remaining “always open to dialogue.”

“I’m sure you will receive a colossal charge of positive emotions at the festival,” the president slightly defused the situation. “And return home with love for Russia.” With these words, the WFM was officially opened.

Vladimir Putin’s words turned out to be so effective that Artificial Intelligence finally found a body and Konstantin Khabensky actually appeared on the stage, immediately joking about how amazing the work of human hands is and the nature of wise words coming out of the same place where pasta enters. The spectators, who had not yet sat down after the president’s speech had put them in a serious mood, laughed in unison – and at the very end of the ceremony they were happily dancing to the Russian version of the song “A Million Voices”, which Polina Gagarina once sang at Eurovision and now repeated again for the international public. After dancing, the participants and spectators rushed to the exit in a dense crowd.

Having got out of the crowd, a festival participant from Norway, accompanied by the same attache (the Kommersant correspondent was impressed, there were not enough attaches for everyone) said that he was very impressed by President Putin’s speech, because “in his country they don’t think about this.” “The crowd here is such an unusual one for international events,” he continued. “Mainly the BRICS countries, this is a new experience for me.” But participants from Côte d’Ivoire admitted that they did not understand anything in the president’s speech: they spoke only French, and the subtitles were exclusively English. But this, according to them, did not stop them from enjoying the ceremony at all: “We danced so well,” they told a Kommersant correspondent.

In the square in front of the stadium, everyone was continuously taking pictures with each other and singing the songs they had just heard. It was impossible to leave without being hugged by one of the joyful guests. People exchanged flags and discussed where else they could intersect. And, despite the burden of responsibility for the fate of the world, in the midst of all this festive noise it became clear that discussions about the structure of the future would have to be postponed a little for now. “It’s so warm today – there’s no need to bring jackets!” – shouted the participants from Kyrgyzstan, handing their flag to the Kommersant correspondent. And as if they summed it up: “We’ll have a blast all week!”

Polina Yachmennikova; Adler, federal territory “Sirius”