Donetsk preparing to celebrate Donbass Liberation Day

Donetsk, Sep 7 – DAN. The Donetsk People’s Republic will mark Donbass Liberation Day, one of its key holidays, on Tuesday. Commemorative events will take place across the Republic; the pictures by the Donetsk News Agency show preparations for the festivities in the DPR capital.

They began several weeks before the holiday: in late August, socles with red banners were installed in the square in front of the key monument to city liberators “To Your Liberators, Donbass.” The monument had been cleaned up together with other monuments to Soviet soldiers. Activists and authorities helped renovate a number of memorial sites, including the monument on the mass grave of ten 301st motorised infantry division fighters in Donetsk’s Petrovskiy district.

A flower exhibition opened in Pushkin Boulevard to mark the 75the anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War. It includes installations feting the liberators of the coal-mining region. Liberation Day banners were hung out along city thoroughfares.

The key events are planned in the DPR on September 8. DPR senior officials will participate in a republican meeting at the Saur Mogila Memorial which will begin at 10:00. Flower laying ceremonies will take place at the monuments to Soviet military leaders Marshall of the Soviet Union Fyodor Tolbukhin, General Nikolay Vatutin, Lieutenant-General Kuzma Gurov, 32th Guards Tank Brigade commander Franz Grinkevich and at the monument to the victims of fascism. An exhibition of young artists’ paintings will open and a theatrical performance will take place in Pushkin Boulevard. The festivities will end with a concert by Russia’s Merited Artist Grigory Leps.

The Red Army launched the Donbass operation on August 13, 1943. The fight for the capital of the region, the city of Stalino (currently Donetsk) began on September 7, 1943. On September 8, Soviet troops took full control of the city. Two weeks later, the region was completely liberated from Hitler troops.*jk