Rearmament of volunteers – Picture of the day – Kommersant

The three-day international forum of civil participation “We are together” ended in Moscow on Wednesday. This time, the already traditional event was dedicated not only to the usual, “peaceful” volunteering, but also to the activities of volunteers related to the special operation and new territories. The “combat spirit” of the forum was also supported by discussions on war correspondents and military training of youth.

Volunteering in recent years has become one of the key areas of youth policy, supervised by the Kremlin’s domestic political bloc. But now this practice, originally developed as a purely peaceful one, is increasingly being associated with a special military operation (SVO). This was demonstrated by the current forum “We are together”, where the topic of volunteering went side by side with the problems of the NWO and new Russian territories.

The event was held in the central exhibition hall “Manezh”, where the organizers represented by Rosmolodezh set up a space called the “House of Youth”. His guests were greeted by the exhibition “Without Borders. Artists of Donbass”, which tells about life in the conditions of hostilities. One of the paintings depicted young people with suitcases waiting for the arrival of a paper airplane, the other depicted the words “Peace is dreamed in Donetsk” against the background of the sky in the colors of the DPR flag.

In the House of Youth itself, the stand of the All-Russian People’s Front (ONF) was striking, dedicated to the project “Everything for Victory”, in which the organization raises funds for the equipment of combatants. What exactly this money is used for was easy to understand from the sapper shovels, bulletproof vests and berets exhibited here. Visitors could also get a branded chocolate bar, on the packaging of which there was a QR code with a link to the project website. At another stand, a “basket of kindness” was installed, where one could leave a New Year’s gift for the children of the NWO participants. On the territory of the Russian Movement of Children and Youth “Kommersant” also talked about the preparation of special souvenirs for the fighters of the NWO.

Panel discussions on the forum were in line with the general content. “347 organizations and universities are involved in all this, and universities have already managed to collect and transfer more than 350 tons of humanitarian aid,” said Minister of Education and Science Valery Falkov at the discussion “#WE ARE TOGETHER so that no one is left alone.” And the head of the executive committee of the ONF, Mikhail Kuznetsov, described how in the courtyard of his office, before being sent to the NVO zone, they check sleeping bags, field baths and shoot bulletproof vests. “The name is good – “People’s Front”. It seems to me that the “People’s Front” has become a real people’s front, ”he explained the successes of the ONF in collecting aid for members of the NWO.

And he added that now “there is no more important event in the country” than the special operation, which is a “historical turning point.”

“I worked in a hospital in Mariupol. There was no question here – it is necessary or not necessary. All the doctors who are there are exhausted for a long time, because they have come a hard long way. People in Mariupol need help. Many of them still live in basements, despite the fact that housing and the city are being restored, ”said the sore neurosurgeon Anton Korotchenko. The commander of the Apostle battalion, Yuri Gagarin, in turn, told how, as part of the Angel group, he helped evacuate people from Mariupol who were “kept like a human shield.” “The Russian authorities did everything to take people from there through negotiations, but the nationalists could not allow this for themselves, because it would be an instant end for them,” Mr. Gagarin explained.

At another session, Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova spoke about exhibitions in the LPR as part of the Our Traditions project. “Now more than 230 thousand people have already visited these wonderful exhibitions that we are doing with the museum community, with our colleagues who work there in museums,” she reported.

The “fighting spirit” was preserved on the last day of the forum. On December 7, a panel session was held on creating conditions for “educating young people who love their Motherland and know how to defend it” with the help of a network of military-patriotic training centers. In the near future, they will appear in ten pilot regions: they plan to teach young people martial arts, tactical medicine and fire training, and they are organized with the participation of the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergei Kiriyenko. The main headliner of the discussion, the presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District, Yuri Trutnev, lamented that military training in Russian schools and universities has “weakened quite a lot” compared to the Soviet period. “We began to forget that every young person should not only love, but also be able to defend their Motherland, and it’s time to remember this. Now we are faced with the task of preparing about 45,000 people in the first year,” the official explained.

There was also a discussion of information wars, which took place within the framework of the open discussion “Military Correspondents as a New Information Force”. In fact, the main speaker was the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, who immediately stated that such a phenomenon as military correspondents exists only in Russia. Representatives of this specialization, according to her, perform a “feat of arms”, delivering information to Mrs. Zakharova herself, which she then uses in the information war.

The forum ended with the presentation of prizes and a parting word from Sergei Kiriyenko. He repeated his thesis that “part of the cultural code of Russia is always to help those who need it,” and spoke a lot about the activities of volunteers in the Donbass.

The official spoke about how volunteers came under fire, and someone died, and ended his speech pathetically: “When we are together, we are not afraid of any challenges and no threats. Together we will win!” The awards went to the volunteers who proved themselves in the SVO, and, in particular, to Yuri Gagarin: he was presented with the Order of Courage by Mr. Kiriyenko. Some volunteers were awarded posthumously.

Andrey Vinokurov