14:12, 30 April 2025

President Putin renames Volgograd airport as “Stalingrad”

Andrei Bocharov, Governor of the Volgograd Region, informed Russian President Vladimir Putin that the military veteran community and participants of the special military operation asked to rename the Volgograd airport to “Stalingrad”. Vladimir Putin signed the appropriate decree on the same day.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in 2023, participants in the May Day rally of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in Volgograd called for renaming the city to Stalingrad, calling the data on mass Stalinist repressions exaggerated. Other Volgograd residents considered it inappropriate to return Stalin's name to the city.

Under Stalin, mass arrests, deportations and executions were carried out on ethnic grounds, and entire nations were declared "hostile," according to the Caucasian Knot's "10 Myths about Stalin's Role in the Great Patriotic War" (available in Russian). The decision on which nations to subject to repression depended directly on Stalin, Boris Sokolov, a historian and member of the Association of Researchers of the Russian Society, told the Caucasian Knot in 2022.

During his meeting with the Russian President, Volgograd Region Governor Andrei Bocharov told Vladimir Putin about the request from “residents of the Volgograd Region, Volgograd, and from other regions,” as well as military veterans, to rename the “Gumrak” airport to the “Stalingrad” airport.

“The people asked me to contact you and support their proposal to rename the airport and give it a real, proud, courageous, heroic name,” the “Kommersant” quotes Andrei Bocharov as talking to Vladimir Putin. The Volgograd Region Governor also especially added that he was asked to voice the request by “the military veteran community, war veterans, and participants of the special military operation (SMO).”

Vladimir Putin responded by saying that the request of the people who ask is law for him. On the evening of April 29, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on assigning the name “Stalingrad” to the “Gumrak” airport. The official document, published by the Kremlin press service, notes that “the historical name assigned to the Volgograd international airport is not an integral part of the established name of this geographic object,” and “it does not entail a change in the established name of this geographic name.”

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 30, 2025 at 01:49 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.

Author: Caucasian Knot