Thread by @maxseddon

Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium, which hosted the World Cup final in 2018, is packed out for a pro-war rally on the anniversary of Russia’s Crimea annexation.

Lots of reports of state employees being bussed in. They’re watching a video with Ukrainian flags being thrown to the ground

“They packed us into a bus and drove us here,” one woman tells @SotaVision

Polina Gagarina, once a Russian Eurovision contestant, absolutely butchering “Cuckoo” by the brilliant Soviet 80s rock band Kino. Nobody must have told her they were known for their *anti-war* songs

Dmitry Guberniev is best known as Russia’s unbelievably positive, hyperactive TV biathlon commentator. Now here he is introducing the leader of a Donbas separatist battalion

Seems every Russian pop star not already blacklisted for anti-war posts on Instagram is here. Oleg Gazmanov is leading the crowd in a singalong of a song about Russian army officers

Gazmanov’s whole shtick is being a Russian Bruce Springsteen, except a hypernationalist one who loves war.

Here he is leading the crowd – with clearly a very high number of students born well after the Soviet collapse – in “Made in the USSR”

The only more pro-war singer than Gazmanov is Nikolai Rastorguev, reputedly Putin’s favorite. You can kind of get the vibe of the music from this picture

Oddly, if you listen to the lyrics, the songs are about how bad war is. But nobody really seems bothered

Putin is about to speak at this rally, surprise surprise, per Kremlin pool

Here’s Putin. He seems to be on his own special giant stage so nobody can get within 20 yards of him even in a massive stadium.

The sings behind him say “For a world without Nazism / For Russia”

Putin is justifying the war by talking about the separatist conflict in Donbas.

“This really was genocide. Stopping that was the goal of the special operation.”

Something extremely odd just happened. Putin was halfway through his speech. He said, “By pure coincidence, the start of the special operation was on the birthday of…” – and then the feed suddenly cut out

Then the state TV feed cut straight to Oleg Gazmanov again. Where the hell is Putin? What happened?

Then just random footage of people chanting

Here's video of Putin suddenly vanishing mid-sentence. Where is he?!

State TV now showing RT’s Margarita Simonyan speaking, claiming it’s live, but am pretty sure this was actually an hour ago

Kommersant, citing a reporter inside the stadium, says Putin finished his speech and the concert is ending t.me/kommersant/283…

State TV showing Putin’s speech again from the top

Turns out state TV cut out just before Putin finished the speech. He quoted Fyodor Ushakov, the legendary Tsarist-era admiral who is now the patron saint of Russia’s strategic nuclear bomber fleet, and left.

For someone who rails against western culture so much, the setup at Putin’s speech is very Wrestlemania. You half expect to hear glass breaking and see Stone Cold come out with a steel chair

Peskov confirms the feed cut out because of a server problem. t.me/rian_ru/154357