Russia Pulls the Plug on Drunken Paratroopers’ Swimming Pool of Choice
By ANDREW ROTH
Published: August 2, 2012
MOSCOW — City governments across Russia drained the water from municipal fountains on Thursday, hoping to keep drunken paratroopers from drowning.......
Aug. 2 is Paratrooper Day in Russia, and every year more than a million burly active and retired soldiers take to the streets in their signature blue berets and striped undershirts to mark the occasion, often by combining large quantities of vodka with plunges into fountains.
President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to call for restraint on Thursday, but with a barely concealed smile, during public remarks to paratroopers in Ulyanovsk. “I hope that Paratrooper Day will pass without excesses, and that your colleagues will behave themselves adequately, at least without gross violations of public order,” he said.
Officially, the day is celebrated with cadet marches and memorials. Unofficially, the elite troops start drinking at sunrise, then head off to city parks to brawl.
Migrant workers from Central Asia have been targets of violence on past Paratrooper Days, and the Federation of Migrants of Russia issued a public warning to avoid parks, train stations and commuter trains, and anywhere else paratroopers might be celebrating on Thursday.
The United States Embassy in Moscow similarly sent out an announcement, saying that while the majority of the celebrations are “jovial and peaceful,” Americans in Russia would be wise to steer clear of “any large crowds and public gatherings that lack enhanced security measures.”
However, a leading gay-rights activist in Russia, Nikolai Alekseyev, said he was not concerned about violence. “I can tell you honestly that in the entire history of the existence in Moscow of the L.G.B.T. movement, we have not had one conflict with the paratroopers, or with the border guards, or with other former military servicemen,” he told the Interfax news agency.
In any event, there were no serious reports of violence on Thursday. Two drunken revelers were arrested in Moscow after they slammed a Tiger — a vehicle similar to an American Humvee — with a mock machine gun strapped to the roof into a car on a Moscow highway. They drove off, but the police caught up with them 10 minutes later.
Moscow city authorities also distributed several tons of watermelons in a downtown park at no charge; paratroopers had been known to steal them in the past.
Most specializations in the Russian armed forces, even radio operators and translators, have their own annual holidays. But only the border guards, who celebrate on May 28, rival the paratroopers for celebratory pranks and melees with the police. One riot police officer died in St. Petersburg this year after a fight with celebrating border guards................
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