“It is hard to detect much warmth these days in relations between Russia and the UK. As the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year, most contact is frozen.
Last week, however, in a remarkable gesture of friendship, an award authorised by President Putin was handed out in Moscow, recognising the wartime links between Russia and Scotland, and reminding “ordinary people” they are “united by respect for our shared historical memory”.
At the Russian ministry of foreign affairs a medal acknowledging the part played by the Scottish village of Errol in Perthshire, where Russian pilots were trained on British-built planes in 1943, was given to the historian Anna Belorusova. Her grandfather, Pyotr Kolesnikov, was one of the pilots and she has devoted the past ten years to commemorating their exploits.
The pilots were part of an elite air group that had ferried supplies to the besieged city of Leningrad in its darkest days in 1941. Many of them did not survive.
Belorusova has made it her mission to erect memorials to their heroism — one in Errol, the other in the small village of Khvoynaya, 170 miles from Leningrad, now St Petersburg, from where they flew their life-saving sorties…
In a small Moscow ceremony, Mikhail Shvydkoy, the Russian president’s special representative for international cultural co-operation, praised Belorusova for the part she had played in commemorating the pilots’ heroism and for recalling a wartime alliance that once linked both countries.
In a remarkable tribute, he said that what she had accomplished:
“proves a profound truth, something that cannot be decreed from above — when personal will aligns with the right cause it can move mountains, reach hearts and awaken souls”.
“People followed you because they recognised that cause as their own. And so two memorials rose, in Khvoynaya and in Errol, created by ordinary people united by respect for our shared historical memory. For the young especially, they are a vivid reminder that this memory is ours to preserve and pass on to future generations.”…”
“There is a new age coming
Where humanity can finally live free
To walk in faith with each other
Without being so caught up in idolistic beliefs
Brothers and sisters
We’re all in this
Together
It’s time to change our ways
The old ways of human thinking are slowly sinking
We’re slowly sinking
Questioners rise and let the new take hold
This is the path of the brave and the bold
(This is the path of the brave and the bold)
This is a call to arms
It’s time we all took part and look within our hearts
And question everything we think we know
It’s time to realize that this is how we all can grow”
℗ Red Brick Army
https://edinburgh.mid.ru/en/victory_day/russian_pilots_in_scotland_during_world_war_ii/