Putin leads flamboyant rally attended by ‘hired extras’

Russian extras were recruited on social media platforms and offered money and free merchandise to pack out a patriotic stadium rally helmed by President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Wednesday, according to reports.

Putin, 70, praised troops who he said were defending the fatherland during the celebration at the Luzhniki Stadium, which was festooned with oversized Russian flags.

Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the defiant leader’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which he has continued to call a “special military operation” and repeatedly tried to blame the West for.

The festivities were attended by a crowd estimated to be around 200,000 people chanting “Russia, Russia” — however, it appears the horde of supporters was all smoke-and-mirrors.

According to the Russian-language news Telegram channel Sirena, ads seeking extras to attend the Defender of the Fatherland Day rally begun appearing on popular social media sites last week.

The recruiters were looking for “background actors, ideally under the age 35-40,” to show up at the stadium rally.

They were being offered 500 rubles, which is about $7, as well as free merchandise for their trouble.

This information was corroborated by reporting from the independent Russian news outlet Meduza.

As an additional incentive, the ad noted that the event was expected to be headlined by several A-list Russian pop stars.

When a Sirena reporter asked one of the organizers whether the celebrities named in the ad were actually going to perform at the rally, he was quoted as saying that he did not know.

“I’m just helping gather a crowd,” he reportedly said.

A Sky News correspondent reporting from Moscow said state employees and students were also bussed in to the stadium to bolster attendance at the event.

“We came from university, we were told to come and we’re here,” a 23-year-old woman named Liuba told the outlet.

The patriotic celebration was attended by representatives of Russia’s military branches in dress uniforms, and featured rappers, pop and rock acts — and even a group of accordion players who entertained the crowd with patriotic songs.

Putin, bundled up in a heavy winter jacket against the freezing temperatures, took the stage two hours into the concert and delivered a three-and-a-half minute speech, in which he hailed Moscow’s forces fighting in Ukraine.

“Right now there is a battle on our historical frontiers for our people,” the president said, referring to Ukrainian territories Russia is seeking to capture.

“They fight heroically, courageously, bravely, we are proud of them.”

The rally was held on the eve of Russia’s Feb. 23 holiday celebrating those who serve in the armed forces.

“Today they are supported by the whole country,” Putin said of Russian soldiers on the front lines.

“When we are together, we have no equal. To the unity of the Russian people.”

But for all the talk of unity in Moscow, the head of the private mercenary force fighting in Ukraine on Russia’s side on Wednesday escalated a bitter feud with top army brass by releasing a graphic photo of dozens of his fighters he said had been killed after being “starved” of ammunition.

The disturbing image shared on Telegram depicts a pile of men’s corpses lying on the snow-covered ground in eastern Ukraine.

“This is one of the places where the bodies of those who have died are gathered,” Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, told a prominent Russian military blogger in an interview.

“These are guys who died yesterday because of so-called shell hunger. Mothers, wives and children will get their bodies. There should be five times less (dead). Who is guilty that they died? The guilty ones are those who should have resolved the question of us getting enough ammo.”

Prigozhin has repeatedly accused the Russian Defense Ministry of deliberately depriving his fighters of munitions in what he has called a treasonous attempt to destroy his company.

The defense ministry denied such allegations as “completely untrue” in a statement Tuesday and complained — without naming Prigozhin — about attempts to sow division that worked “solely to the benefit of the enemy.”

Besides releasing the grisly photo of his dead combatants, a defiant Prigozhin also released a redacted copy of what he said was Wagner’s official request to the defense ministry for ammunition with detailed tallies of shells used, requested and received.

“They’re still not giving us ammo. No steps to give us ammo have been taken,” said Prigozhin, saying that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, were withholding their signatures from shell approval forms.

Prigozhin, a wealthy catering mogul dubbed “Putin’s chef,” said Wednesday he had launched a social media campaign to try to procure the shells and that Wagner had been reduced to begging military warehouses for ammunition, which he said was sometimes successful.

Despite the purported shortage, he said his fighters would keep trying to capture the key city of Bakhmut in the Dontesk region, which has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war in recent months.

Russian forces have been making incremental advances in the east ahead of an anticipated large-scale offensive.

“Twice as many of us are going to die, that’s all, until there are none of us left,” he said.
“And when Wagner are all dead then Shoigu and Gerasimov will probably have to pick up a gun.”

Near Bakhmut Wednesday, 18 towns and villages came under fire, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a statement overnight.

In southern Ukraine, two civilians were killed in Russian shelling of the Kherson region, said regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin. An 81-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man were killed during shelling of the village of Novotyahinka, about 25 miles from the city of Kherson.

A day earlier, a Russian rocket struck a busy street in Kherson, killing six people.

Two civilians were wounded in a missile strike on an industrial facility in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, according to regional officials.

With Post wires