Meetings with veterans of military operations in Ukraine have become part of the cultural life of St. Petersburg
Despite the pouring rain, the main hall of St. Petersburg’s Listva bookstore is almost full. A slim, bespectacled young man dressed in a suit sits in front of the audience. He’s the type of person you could easily meet in a university auditorium, and it looks like he’s going to talk about philosophy, international policy, or history (such lectures regularly occur here). However, on this young man’s chest we notice two Orders of Courage – which are among Russia’s highest military decorations.
The man is National Bolshevik party member Stanislav Getmanets, who uses the military call sign ‘Biden’. He went to the front as a volunteer a year ago. His detachment, which became known in the Russian media as “combat anime,” was among the first to capture Western military equipment during the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s (AFU) summer…