March of 20,000. World Youth Festival in Sochi

The World Youth Festival in Sochi, a huge event attended by delegations from more than 180 countries around the world, ended a few days ago. Not only the BRICS countries, not only the friendly states of Russia, young people from Western countries, such as the United States, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, also joined the festival.

For more than a week in Sochi, a charming tourist hub on the shores of the Black Sea in southern Russia, offering amazing beaches and beautiful mountain landscapes, tens of thousands of delegates and hundreds of volunteers from all over the world were hosted.

The purpose of the festival was to celebrate cultural diversity and bring young people from all over the world closer to learning about Russia, including through participation in various regional programs that allowed young people who had the desire to do so to visit other parts of Russia and the new Russian territories: Lugansk, Sevastopol, Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok, etc.,.

At the festival the participants not only got to know each other and thus develop a dialogue on their own, but were also able to attend a great number of panels, exhibitions and events covering a variety of topics; from politics to workshops on new technological tools and new media.

The representatives of the various countries interviewed repeatedly reiterated their willingness to work together on the problems of the future of the new generations, such as environmental sustainability, technological innovation, academic exchanges and study opportunities in different countries.

Also of great importance were the open meetings with major figures from the world of politics, art and culture. For Russia, Dimitry Medvedev, Sergei Lavrov, Maria Zakharova, Margarita Simonyan as well as several international guests, such as Italian artist Jorit and Ornella Muti participated.

Exceptional guest at the closing of the festival: the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, personally spoke. He delivered a speech at the ceremony collecting a lot of applause from the young people present.

President Putin then participated in a more restricted meeting with some delegates, who were able to ask the Russian president questions. Of great importance was this meeting, which the author also attended, because it allowed the young people to see up close the Russian president, very often in the West dehumanized by propaganda. Vladimir Putin was very friendly, joked with the participants in the meeting and at the end he even granted a photo to the Italian artist Jorit and an African delegate who had asked him questions shortly before.

All of these young people, who these days are continuing their experience through participation in regional programs, will take with them the memory of this event and the thousands of young people they saw from all countries of the world. They will remember the events with Russian universities, which are always open for foreign students, including Western ones, and maybe they will remember it when they return to the West, to those universities that have unilaterally closed exchange programs with Russia. They will certainly have something to say the next time they hear someone talk about ” isolation of Russia.” 

Andrea Lucidi

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Andrea Lucidi - Андреа Лучиди

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