Putin praises ‘great Russia’ at biker festival

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday hailed an “indivisible and great Russia” at a bike festival in the Black Sea resort city of Novorossiysk. Putin was met at the festival by the leader of the Night Wolves bike group before mounting a three-wheeled Harley-Davidson motorcycle to head a convoy of bikers. This was Putin’s third meeting with the Night Wolves in as many years. Before mounting his bike, Putin gave a speech to festival-goers in which he said Novorossiysk’s World War Two history was inextricably linked to motorcycles, which he said were used to “carry children away” from the danger of Nazi attack. He also said that the “historical memory” of the fight against German forces in World War Two was a “cement” that held together people of different ethnicities and beliefs to “make a “united and indivisible Russian nation, to create and strengthen a united and indivisible great Russia.”