MOSCOW
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree renaming the international airport situated in the city of Volgograd to its historical name of Stalingrad.
“In order to perpetuate the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, I decree to assign Volgograd International Airport with the historical name ‘Stalingrad’,” said the decree published by the Kremlin late Tuesday.
The renaming of the airport comes as Putin conducted a visit to the city earlier that day, which also included talks with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, ahead of the 80th anniversary of Victory Day.
Victory Day is a holiday celebrated in Russia and various former Soviet countries on May 9 in commemoration of Nazi Germany’s surrender during World War II, a conflict Russia officially calls the Great Patriotic War.
Situated on the western bank of the Volga River, Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in 1961 under the government of then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, amid a period of political reforms after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953 known as de-Stalinization.
The city is the site of the Battle of Stalingrad, a brutal military campaign between August 1942 and February 1943, as a result of which the Soviet Union stopped Nazi Germany’s advance toward the Caucasus, but at an estimated cost of over a million Soviet troops.
