In a celebration of war, Moscow displays and demands unity

A concert and rally in Russia's largest stadium have romanticized the invasion of Ukraine, as Vladimir V. Putin and his government seek normalize the country's war footing.

MOSCOW - It was one of the biggest public celebrations of the war Russia has seen since the invasion in grand scale of Ukraine - crowds in the country's largest stadium, cheering the images of destruction and songs about bloodshed and the conquest of Ukraine.

Officially the event was linked to the annual Defenders of the Fatherland holiday in Russia, honoring veterans, but occurring two days before the anniversary of the invasion, it served as a broadcast television show of popular support for the war, the armed forces that waged it, and the man behind it, President Vladimir V. Putin.

"I like it!" said Aleksandr, 47, a Moscow lawyer, waving a flag high in the stands as a performer rapped about Ukrainian territories Mr Putin claimed he annexed last year. "I don't understand how I can't support it," he said of a war the Kremlin bans people from calling a war, calling it a "special military operation."

ImageTickets were not available for purchase, but distributed primarily to government employees and students, who were given a day off from work or study and round-trip transportation.

The highly choreographed concert and rally romanticized the Russian military and war; while the artists sang, the stadium screens did not show them, but instead played videos of soldiers fighting and firing heavy weapons, and destroying buildings. Next to the stadium entrance, volunteers sewed camouflage netting.

In uniform, First Lieutenant Nikolai Romanenko performed a rap "remix" featuring featured the popular WWII song "Katyusha", with updated lyrics including "I'm not afraid to stain my hands with blood up to the elbow."

Another person performed a rap ballad about "demons buried in Azovstal", the Ukrainian fighters who resisted for weeks in a steel mill in Mariupol, including lyrics in Ukrainian, with a video se mocking Ukrainian women who pleaded for the evacuation of their husbands, sons and brothers.

Grigory Leps, one of Russia's best-known pop singers, has sang a song fusing the World War II recruiting slogan "The Fatherland: The Mother Calls" with the contemporary refrain p ro-war "We do not abandon our people."

Overall, the celebration at the Luzhniki Stadium reflected the Kremlin's campaign towards normalcy read the war for the Russian population, a tacit recognition that it will not end anytime soon. The event even featured some acknowledgment of Russian casualties, but not their enormous scale.

ImageA of Lenin outside the stadium.

"They are trying to militarize all of society," said Grigory B. Yudin, professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Social Sciences. Economics, who did not attend the event.

Tickets were...