Russian ‘Night Wolves’ bikers to rally across Poland to Berlin
PR dla Zagranicy
John Beauchamp
10.04.2015 13:01
Russian bikers from President Vladimir Putin’s favourite club, the ‘Night Wolves’ will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War with a rally across Poland.
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets the Night Wolves in Sevastopol in 2012. Photo: cc/kremlin.ru
The bikers will celebrate victory of the Great Patriotic War – as it is known in Russia – with a 6,000-kilometre rally from Moscow to Berlin.
The rally is to travel via the Belarusian capital, Minsk, Wrocław in south-west Poland – which under the name of Breslau was one of the last strongholds of German resistance after the surrender of Berlin – Brno in the Czech Republic, the Slovak capital of Bratislava, Vienna, Munich and Prague to Berlin.
The rally, open to all comers, will start on 25 April, the anniversary of the Russian forces closing the ring around Berlin.
The end is slated for 9 May, when the bikers will lay flowers at the Red Army monument in Treptower Park.
The ‘Night Wolves’ club is the oldest in Russia, being founded during the Perestroika period in 1989 before the collapse of the USSR. It regularly celebrates important Russian anniversaries, including Unity Day, which commemorates a Russian popular uprising that liberated Moscow from Polish-Lithuanian forces on 4 November 1612.
It is also no secret that the ‘Night Wolves’ also supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, with their show in August 2014 in Sevastopol broadcast by Russian state television.
The leader of the 5000-strong biker group, Alexander “The Surgeon” Zaldostanov, is considered to be a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. (an/jb)
Source: tvn24