Ilsur Metshin: “We honor the memory of our grandfathers”

Today Ilsur Metshin, like many other citizens of Kazan, took part in the march of the “Immortal Regiment”. The Mayor of Kazan went to the march with a portrait of his grandfather Muzagit Metshin.

He went through the whole war from the first days to the Victory in 1945, fought on the Belorussian Front, was a machine gunner and participated in the liberation of Kaliningrad. He received five wounds and two concussions. He met the Victory Day in Poland. He passed away in the early 1960s.

“My father was six years old when the war began, and he remembers well this difficult time. Our family lived in a village in the Tukayevsky region and experienced all the hardships of the war, including famine”, said the head of Kazan.

Other relatives of Ilsur Metshin also took part in the war. Nurmei Gizatullin served as an ordinary rifleman-driver; in 1942 he was wounded and transferred to the reserve. Nurulla Sharifullin, the grandfather by the mother’s side, was the mortar maker of the 80th separate ski battalion of the 257th Infantry Division – the 91st Guards Rifle Division of the 2nd formation – the Western Front. He died in 1942.

“He was sent to the Pskov region in the first months of the war. The reconnaissance group, into which he entered, penetrated the enemy's deep rear and undermined the formations with weapons that went to reinforce the Germans. But after completing the assignment, the enemy destroyed them. Already in our time, search teams found eyewitnesses who, as children in the Great Patriotic War, saw how an enemy tank literally crushed Soviet soldiers, including my grandfather. Then my mother was only three months old and she grew up an orphan, never seeing her father”, the Mayor shared the history of his ancestor

“We honor the memory of our grandfathers, very proud of their feat, and we pass this memory from generation to generation. Even now, telling these stories, we are overflowing with a sense of pride and huge gratitude for having our right to life, our native land defended with an incredibly high price. A huge tragedy affected the entire country, and today the main thing is to prevent the war so that we or our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will not see it”, said I. Metshin.

The procession of the column in honor of the 72nd anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War started at the intersection of streets Karl Marx and Tolstoy and passed along the route of streets K. Marx, Lobachevsky, Kremlevskaya to the Millennium Square. The largest Victory Banner with an area of more than 200 square meters led the procession, which was carried by 600 people: participants of the international youth educational project “Union is the heirs of Victory”. The total length of the route in the capital of Tatarstan was more than 2 km. About 120 thousand Kazan citizens took part in the action.

Earlier, the Mayor of Kazan took part in the ceremony of laying flowers to the Eternal Flame and the Monument to the Mothers and Widows of the dead soldiers in Pobedy Park and visited the solemn parade.