Breathtaking motorbike stunts, laser effects, rock music and pyrotechnics: the story of the second world war has never looked so sexy. Russia’s Night Wolves biker gang will put on an enormous show in annexed Crimea on Friday night, which is expected to provide a dramatic and highly visual recreation of the war as a bike show.
The Night Wolves have become a highly visible part of a new patriotic drive in Russia, led by their leader, Alexander Zaldostanov, better known as the Surgeon. They have been given a huge piece of land outside Sevastopol in Crimea, where they are due to build a vast centre devoted to extreme sports and patriotic education. Reports this week suggest they have also been gifted a large plot of land in Moscow.
Each year, the bikers put on a show in Sevastopol, the Crimean port, which has grown in its ambition and significance since Russia annexed Crimea last spring. The exact contents of this year’s show, which is due to feature bike stunts and huge, synchronised set pieces, is being kept a secret. But the general outline appears to involve a recreation of the Soviet victory in the second world war, known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia.
A trailer for the show begins with footage of a speech by Adolf Hitler, before cutting to bikers and then scenes from previous shows. The group have borrowed a T-34 tank from the war museum in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, to use in the show.
Under Putin, the Soviet victory has become a national rallying point, with lavish celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary in May. The events have been applied somewhat crudely to contemporary events, with the post-Maidan government in Ukraine referred to as fascists and the orange-black ribbon, a symbol of victory, adopted by the pro-Russia rebels in east Ukraine.
Zaldostanov in particular has become a frequent public figure over the past 18 months as one of the founding members of the AntiMaidan group, which promises to avert the possibility of a Ukraine-style uprising in Russia. He was present at the opening of a huge military theme park outside Moscow in June.
“In Soviet times, the army was a distant, faraway thing, but now we all feel closer to the army. The army is being romanticised and I see that as a good thing,” Zaldostanov said at the time. “If we don’t educate our own children then America will do it for us … like we have seen in Ukraine.”
The bike show will come at the end of a week when Putin made a three-day trip to Crimea, during which he descended to the bottom of the Black Sea in a bathyscaphe and agreed to grant Russian citizenship to US boxer Roy Jones Jr.
Putin made the journey to the seabed to look at the ruins of a Byzantine trading ship, which he said proved Russia’s ancient links to the region. During a surprise meeting with the boxer, the pair discussed martial arts, before Jones asked Putin for citizenship.
“I want to ask you about maybe having a passport to go back and forth, so that I can do business here, because all the people here seem to love Roy Jones Jr. And I love when people love me,” the boxer said. Putin said he would happily fulfil the request if Jones intended to spend a significant amount of time in Russia.
Putin was also in Crimea to discuss stimulating the tourism industry, one of the region’s biggest revenue streams. Government workers have been offered subsidies on trips. Flight traffic to the peninsula’s airport in Simferopol has since grown enormouslybut the number of visitors is still well down on 2013, the last year before the region was annexed, as Ukrainian and foreign visitors who previously came through mainland Ukraine are almost entirely absent.
The only other way to access Crimea is across a narrow strait from Russia, but ferry capacity has meant huge queues. Putin has ordered the construction of a bridge in the coming years, but the project is expensive and liable to delays.
