A requiem meeting dedicated to the Day of Remembrance and Mourning was held in the Brest Fortress

A requiem rally dedicated to the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow was held on June 22 in the Brest Fortress. Thousands of people from different countries took part in the commemorative events.

The action started early in the morning. At 4:15 a.m., the participants gathered on the territory of the fortress — it was at this time on June 22, 1941, that the first explosions sounded here and the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union began.

"When you touch the walls that are drenched in blood, <...> I'm just overwhelmed with feelings. I can't talk about it, even goosebumps run through my body. It's almost to tears," said Oleg Siyagin, a participant in the action.

One living wall of memory, in this predawn silence, flowers were laid at the eternal flame.

"I'm going out today and crying all day, both from the music and from Slavyanka. I have a victory just by seeing people. Everything in my soul is full of sorrow," added participant Marina Makarova.

Already at dawn, planes were flying over the fortress again, shooting, explosions, a duel between a shrike cannon and a German tank near the Western Fort, civilians were captured. The reenactors show the key moments of the heroic defense of the citadel. The Germans planned a blitzkrieg, capturing the fortress in eight hours, but were only able to surround it. The pressure was so strong that after four days the defense concentrated only in the Eastern Fort.

"The Eastern Fort is the last center of the organized defense of the fortress. There's a lot left in this place from the moment of the fighting. Potholes are visible, the vaults are still crumbling, but there is no overlap. On the second floor there was our anti-aircraft gun, which held back the fascists. They hit her," Roman Polshakov, a correspondent for Izvestia, said.

The whole fortress is a giant mass grave. The remains of more than a thousand defenders are buried under the memorial slabs, the names of only 264 people are known. Vladimir Semochkin's father, the political commissar who held the defense for eight days, also rests here.

"We went to the cinema and went to bed, everything was calm. And in the morning there is a roar, the fortress is all on fire. The father got up first and said to the mother: "Tanya, it's war, I'm going to work, and you take care of the children." These are his last words, he left, and we never saw him again," said Vladimir Semochkin, the son of the defender of the Brest Fortress.

Every year, on the eve and day of the outbreak of war, Brest lives in memory. This time, a new memorial area was opened in the fortress itself. The image for the sculptural composition of the grieving woman was a picture of Lieutenant Kuznetsov's widow in the citadel in 1965.

The "Memory Train" has traditionally been met at the city railway station. In 2026, schoolchildren from 18 countries, including the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, will travel to the cities of military glory of Russia and Belarus on this train. Children from the USA, Great Britain and France, they all have Russian roots and know the truth, despite the fact that they are taught in school.

"They talked about fighting, they tried to capture, but they didn't say much about Russia," explained Lev Shorin, a 16—year-old participant in the Train of Memory from the United States.

Answering a journalist's question about whether the United States is talking about the decisive role of Americans in the victory in World War II, Shorin agreed with this assessment.

"Well, yes. My great-grandfather Ivan Gerasimovich, he served in intelligence, <...> went through the whole war," the boy emphasized.

They also met the dawn over Brest, the same as 85 years ago, in absolute silence, in which the feat of the garrison can be heard.

Day of Remembrance and Mourning: how the Great Patriotic War began

For Russians, June 22, 1941 remains the most important historical date.

On this day, Izvestia published footage of the patriotic action "Tomorrow was the war" in Volgograd on Mamayev Kurgan, which became traditional on the eve of the Day of Remembrance and Mourning. Evgeny Ivanov, Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Volgograd Region, noted that the event has symbolic significance, especially in modern conditions. According to him, the action shows Western countries an example of respect for historical events.

Commemorative actions on the eve of the Day of Remembrance and Mourning on June 21 were held in Russian cities. In Kazan's Victory Park, residents of the city and activists of the Young Guard of United Russia laid out a portrait of Peter Gavrilov, the hero of the defense of the Brest Fortress, from 40 thousand candles.