A 23-year-old blogger was given a 10-month labor sentence this month for a social-media video that Russian authorities say amounted to “rehabilitating Nazism.” Experts say the law is being used to impose public conformity with the government’s jingoistic version of World War II history.
In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russian President Vladimir Putin laid flowers at the Frontier Stone Monument on the Nevsky Patch.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus Sergei Aleinik, Belarus' Ambassador to Russia Dmitry Krutoi, as well as St. Petersburg Vice Governor Valery Moskalenko laid flowers at the monuments and the Eternal Flame.