Immortal Regiment

The Immortal Regiment (Russian: Бессмертный полк, romanized: Bessmertnyy polk) is a massive civil event in major cities in Russia and around the world every 9 May during the Victory Day celebrations. It is also a public non-profit organization, created in Russia on a voluntary basis with the aim of "immortalizing" the memory of home front workers, armed forces service personnel, partisans, personnel of resistance organizations, and personnel of law enforcement and emergency services. It involves people carrying on the memory of war veterans, with participants carrying pictures of relatives or family friends who served in the country's labor sector, paramilitary units, the Soviet Armed Forces and law enforcement organizations during the Second World War. The main procession in Moscow usually follows the Moscow Victory Day Parade in the morning, and is a televised event aired all over the world. The front line of the procession carries a banner with the words Bessmertniy Polk written on it. In Belarus the nongovernmental, independent procession has been met with a strong opposition from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's government, to give an advantage to governmental processions and events on the day.