Victory Day, Vaccination Drives, and Mass Marriage

In this week's Odder News we celebrate Victory Day, an airborne mass wedding goes into the Guinness Book of World Records, and a blogger pays for you to tattoo yourself with his name.

• Victory Day was May 9, and one governor was called out for wishing a deceased veteran a great Victory Day. The incident occurred in Chelyabinsk, where the veteran died in January. Normally, the Ministry of Social Protection sends out greetings to the veterans in the region, but a technical failure botched this year's greetings.
• Literally every person in Russia had this question on their lips during Sunday's Victory Day Parade televised from Moscow: "Who were those young ladies in pink sitting behind the veterans and Putin the whole time?" It was the title of an article in the next day's Arguments and Facts, where you can also see the photo. In a sea of red, white, and blue, plus military green, they were the only ones in pink raincoats. It turns out they are students of the Moscow cadet corps boarding school. The girls may not themselves become soldiers, but they are the daughters of either soldiers currently posted very far from home or soldiers killed in action.
• ZAGS went airborne this week as thirty couples got married in the air above Moscow in a bid to put themselves in the Guinness World Records. A Moscow cable car system suspended over Sparrow Hills and the Moscow River hosted the world's greatest-ever number of simultaneous nuptials on public transportation. The newlyweds ranged in age from 23 to 60. Like many weddings this year, the Guinness people appeared as guests via video call, from London. Statistically, there are fewer Russian marriages in May than in any other month, but maybe this record – plus all those who applied to participate in the record-making event and were denied – will change that.
• Brash LDPR Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky wants to increase vaccination rates. Under Zhirinovsky's plan, people arrested or fined for minor offenses will be let off if they vaccinate. He has also proposed linking university acceptance to vaccination.
• Living up to professional bloggers' reputations as narcissists, a Belarusian blogger is offering money to his followers to tattoo their bodies with his last name, Stashkevich. So far, seventeen followers have taken him up on the offer and gotten inked. Requests keep coming in, but Stashkevich decided that he could not spend all of his money to spread his name around the Russian-speaking world.