Putin signs decree renaming Volgograd airport to historical name of Stalingrad

“In order to perpetuate the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, I decree to assign Volgograd International Airport with the historical name ‘Stalingrad’,” said the decree published by the Kremlin late Tuesday.

The renaming of the airport comes as Putin conducted a visit to the city earlier that day, which also included talks with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, ahead of the 80th anniversary of Victory Day.

Victory Day is a holiday celebrated in Russia and various former Soviet countries on May 9 in commemoration of Nazi Germany’s surrender during World War II, a conflict Russia officially calls the Great Patriotic War.

Situated on the western bank of the Volga River, Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in 1961 under the government of then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, amid a period of political reforms after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953 known as de-Stalinization.

The city is the site of the Battle of Stalingrad, a brutal military campaign between August 1942 and February 1943, as a result of which the Soviet Union stopped Nazi Germany’s advance toward the Caucasus, but at an estimated cost of over a million Soviet troops.