​The successfully conducted international online conference was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War (World War II). The organisers were the Rossotrudnichestvo government agency together with the All-Russian Congress of Municipalities. The meeting was attended by representatives of Russian and foreign sister cities from Belarus, Great Britain, Germany, Israel, Slovakia, the USA, France.

Krasnoyarsk used the opportunity to share its experience of interacting with US cities in preserving the historical memory of the Krasnoyarsk airway, better known as the Alaska-Siberia (ALSIB) route. In 2015, the flight of American aircraft of the Great Patriotic War took place along the route of the air route.

Similar demonstration flight was also supposed to take place 2020, but due to the COVID-19 situation, the flight of friendship was postponed to 2021. However, in the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Washington (DC), Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, with the support of the President of the Congress of Russian Americans Natalie Sabelnik, exhibitions dedicated to this very occasion are to be organised. In Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau the one helping us is our compatriot, president of the Alaska-Siberia research centre, author of books on ALSIB Alexander Dolitsky.

The conference was attended by a Krasnoyarsk delegate in our Slovak sister city of Zilina Mr. Pavol Vitek. Pavol and his daughter Alexandra Maria Vitekova visited Krasnoyarsk in 40-degree cold weather in January 2018, and the unforgettable experience visiting the city became part of Pavol’s published travel books on Siberia and the Far East. It was he who initiated the laying of a wreath from Krasnoyarsk on April 30, 2020, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the sister city of Zilina from the Nazi invaders to the memorial to the fallen soldiers of the Red Army in the Slovak city. Mr. Vitek helped us maintain a good tradition:

— It was an honor for me to lay a wreath of seventy-five flowers on behalf of the city of Krasnoyarsk to the monument. We did this out of sincere gratitude and recognition of the enormous sacrifices made by the population of the Soviet Union as a whole.