“Their opinion should interest us least of all when it comes to our holidays,” he said on the radio station, Moscow Says.
Boyarsky stressed that the day of lifting the blockade is a “solemn-mourning event,” however, many associate it with the day of the Leningrad victory.
“For many of those who went through this hell to this day remembers the days when liberation came, for them it was certainly Victory Day,” he said.
In an article entitled “Moscow abuses memory of Leningrad,” journalist Silka Bigalka writes that the celebrations are inappropriate when it comes to large-scale tragedy.
She argues that "once again in Moscow they focus on national pride, and not on memory."