Russia marks wartime victory at World Cup stadium

VOLGOGRAD, RUSSIA » In a World Cup soccer stadium built on the Stalingrad battlefield, Russia remembered its wartime dead on Wednesday.

The Russian Cup final was played not only on Victory Day — when Russia marks the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany — but on part of the site of the Battle of Stalingrad, the costly and crushing Soviet victory which marked a point in World War II.

At halftime of the game between FC Tosno and Avangard Kursk, there was a ceremony to honor surviving World War II veterans.

The new stadium will also host World Cup games next month in a tournament which the government hopes will showcase Russia’s prestige.

Under President Vladimir Putin, wartime victory is celebrated as Russia’s defining, unifying national story. The mayor of Volgograd — turning the modern name for Stalingrad — likens the city to holy ground.

“Our city is a warrior city, a city which practically defended the planet, you could say, from fascism,” he said Wednesday. “The city was almost entirely razed from the face of the earth and built again. The city is built on the battlefield where more than two million soldiers from both sides were killed.”

The remains of 386 bombs and shells, and of two Soviet soldiers, were found during construction of Volgograd Arena. During the Battle of Stalingrad from August 1942 through February 1943, the riverbank on which it stands was the site of fierce fighting over a nearby command post and oil reserves. Fuel on the water meant even the river burned.

Wednesday’s cup final, played between two provincial clubs, was largely overshadowed by the symbolism of the events around it.

After a solemn but triumphal military parade in the morning, the game aimed to show off the new 45,000-seat arena. Tickets were free to ensure enough of a crowd to test the stadium to its limits ahead of the World Cup.

Each teams brought its own wartime history to the game.

The town of Tosno was occupied by German forces and almost entirely destroyed during the siege of nearby St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, while Kursk was the site of the largest tank battle of the war. “Stalingrad, Kursk — we know how to win,” one banner in the stands said.