Dushanbe City Hall has not confirmed the holding of the "Immortal Regiment" march in the city on May 9.
“This event is not included in the list of activities planned for Victory Day,” an official source within the Dushanbe City hall told Asia-Plus in an interview.
Earlier, Chairman of the Union of Internationalist Veterans (veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War from December 1978 to February 1989) of Tajikistan, Shavkat Mirzoyev, told Asia-Plus that the "Immortal Regiment" would take place in the capital.
It is to be noted that the Union of Internationalist Veterans of Tajikistan organizes this event on its own every year.
Last year, about 30 people took part in the "Immortal Regiment" march dedicated to Victory Day in Dushanbe.
The Immortal Regiment is a massive civil event in major cities in Russia and around the world every May 9 during the Victory Day celebrations.
In 2011, journalists Sergey Lapenkov, Sergey Kolotovkin and Igor Dmitriyev noticed that fewer and fewer veterans took part in street processions on Victory Day. In the spirit of the holiday, they built on this idea and created an official organization. May 9, 2012 became the birth date of the movement in its modern form. A column of city residents passed through the streets of Tomsk, who carried placards with photographs of their relatives who fought in the Great Patriotic War. The rally, called the Immortal Regiment, was attended by more than 6,000 people who carried more than two thousand portraits of war participants.
Since it was introduced in 2012, the Immortal Regiment has been conducted in cities such as Moscow, Washington D.C., Tashkent, Berlin, and Yekaterinburg. By 2015, it had received national status in Russia. The Immortal Regiment therefore has become one of the most important elements of the celebrations of Victory Day in Russia and other CIS member nations.
