The Kremlin planned a rally-concert with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 22, after the president's message to the Federal Assembly. This is reported by RIA Novosti and RBC , citing sources. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, in response to RBC's request, replied that he "has nothing to say yet."
According to RIA, a total of 200,000 people will take part in the Luzhniki event. A parliamentary source also said the concert had been scheduled for 22 February. Three RBC sources familiar with the discussion of the issue named the most likely venue for the Luzhniki concert. One of the interlocutors claims that the concert will be a kind of "continuation" of the message to the Federal Assembly. The organization of sites on the military-patriotic theme at the stadium during the concert is also being discussed.
Another RBC source said that the Kremlin wants to hold a message to the Federal Assembly as close as possible to the anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine (RBC continues to write "special operations"). Putin's speech to parliament is scheduled a day before the event at Luzhniki, on 21 February.
On February 21 and 22, it will be a year since Putin announced the recognition of the "independence of the LPR and the DPR", and the State Duma and the Federation Council supported his decision. Two days later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
During the last concert at Luzhniki (in honor of the annexation of Crimea), Putin gave a speech in a Loro Piana down jacket worth 1.4 million rubles. After that, an expensive piece of clothing began to be discussed on social networks and made it the subject of memes, and for some reason TSUM removed the position with a down jacket from its website. The archived copy of the page indicates that the down jacket disappeared from the site in the evening of the same day, immediately after it was identified by social media users. The concert in honor of the annexation of the peninsula was attended by Grigory Leps, Timati, Nikolai Rastorguev, the Lyube group and Polina Gagarina.
Sirena found out that since February 24, about 1 billion rubles have been allocated from the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives for propaganda activities in support of the war. This list also includes concerts with Russian stars actively supporting the war. The main "grantee" was the project of ANO "Expert Institute for Social Research", close to the curator of the fund Sergei Kiriyenko. For example, the institute will act as the organizer of the festival “Russian Summer. ZaRussia" for 109 million rubles. EISI was created specifically to promote the propaganda ideas of the Kremlin.