seven thirty pm in moscow we're reviewing the week's top stories on our team black in your back in russia's presidential saddle with all eyes now on his plans and policies following the latest wave of discontent within retaking the top job. radical islamists say they carried out a deadly bombing in the syrian capital in response to the actions of government troops confirming fears that terror groups are fighting on the rebel side. as many as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched against austerity in spain as fresh political turmoil in greece again threatens to unravel a severely weakened euro zone. russian rescue teams join the search for answers in

indonesia at the site of the sukhoi superjet crash that killed all forty five aboard. up next we take a look at russia's huge symbol of good over evil and bring you the heart rending stories and the struggles it portrays stay with us for our special report. she stands fifty two meters tall with a sword eighty five she weighs eight thousand tons and is six meters tall of the most famous symbol of the united states. the guinness book of records named it as the tallest sculpture in the world at the time of construction. brushes symbol of victory the motherland coles sits on the hill of my my after a gun in volgograd. the city sold one of the bloodiest battles of the second world war.

during the war it was known as a stunning grab the first day of the battle in july nine hundred forty two learned so far two thousand people killed more than two million soviet soldiers and residents of stunning grad to die in the course of nearly seven months another million and a half were killed on the german side the remains of hundreds of thousands of shells and bombs can still be found to this day. as if they were the says he was for and that was then when i first thought about how to restore everything that had been laid to waste. valentino was a construction worker her family moved to the city right after the second world war she witnessed not only the restoration of stalingrad from the ruins but also the competition to create the best monument stalin had ordered the memory of the conflict to be immortalized on the my of course. was put in charge. when you consider two projects were also thought about building in wonderment only segura

the sixty fourth on mill the soviet union defended the site but it was far from the city center the second project was a gun issue just that we decided to build here because the entire city could descend from the top. sculptors from all over the country submitted their projects to participate in the contest stalin eventually chose yevgeny for church known for his works of socialist realisable that symbolized heroism at that time he'd already created the soviet war really believe he was later responsible for a statue abroad is called that a speech songs into plowshares which can be found outside the united nations. but with my my of the artist was faced with a difficult task he had to come up with a symbol representing a call for victory because stomping ground was a major turning during. the search for his leads began. to question of who inspired the work is a very interesting one they were lots of theories some thought it was

a waitress fell into me or gymnast knew. but in fact guinea watch it each was fast inspired by nike off some of the race the first version of the statue was half the final size twenty five metres was there were plans to build a messiah cool under the morning meant it but then the weight of the statue doubled while the foundation had been made with a mission that planned lote so they decided to add one hundred fifty thousand more tons of earth. for the most part the maya have good gun is a huge cemetery as a result of the construction the mass graves ended up buried under eight meters of earth. village two hundred fifty kilometers from volgograd alexander sunico for left his home here in one nine hundred forty one never to come back. the one day alexander was getting an old man

a lift he was still that he would die at the age of twenty. alexander lived but his mother sang deep into thought. battery. when alexander volunteered for the front he left his mother three sisters under a younger brother behind from the age of nine alexander became the man of the house people used to say that even if alexander was hungry and self he would find food first for the others today only his system a dish dose of our lives a younger brother died before he could find the final resting place of their deceased brother alexander's nephew alexy continued the search. during the war alexander was a tank man after fighting nearly five hundred kilometers from stalingrad all the way to my africa people seriously. the soldier had a choice either go to hospital will stop the enemy advance he chose the latter.

alexander died from his wounds two days before the end of the battle in street fighting is stunning grant's room which now serves as a reminder of the hundreds of even now the remains of hundreds of thousands of soviet soldiers or missing thirty three search teams scour the area to finally lay them to rest somewhere for the best find was a letter that a soldier wrote to his fiance before his death but he did not have time to send this note it was written in verse we read it to the end outloud. seventy years have passed but bullet casings unexploded mines and shell fragments continued to be honest in one instance the remains of forty soldiers were found in a single day bridge life expectancy of a soldier upon arriving in stalingrad was twenty four hours few managed to survive almost all two hundred days like alexander soon to call for. according to the law

we bury those found within the city boundaries of. those without a name or laid to rest separately in accordance with russian law those found in other regions of varied elsewhere. from the moment the war ended alexander's relatives searched intensely for his grave. they failed to find his remains in the place indicated on the death notice. only seventy years later they discover that he had been exuding together with the remains of many other soldiers. they had been moved to a mass grave situated on the eastern slope of the foot of the mother man calls monument. from people working at the memorial helps a real nigga nephew find where the soldier had been buried. a card index system keeps all the information about the reentered soldiers.

here's your uncle's card aleksandr at zero niko so aleksei you can see that your uncle is not only engraved forever on the wall of the memorial complex but also in the battle of stalingrad museum archives. it turned out that the final resting place of the young soldier was found here on the hill but he defended to the end. well hello how examine the. thirty four thousand five hundred five people are buried of the foot of the motherland calls another eleven thousand people are in a smaller mass grave elsewhere on the hill. who chatted to wanted to immortalize the names of the deceased tsonga's lists came in from moscow from that information

seven thousand two hundred names have been engraved in the my after guns hole of military glory however the full story of nine hundred of the foreman has not yet been revealed the only information they have is a surname and initials a special team at the memorial complex investigates these soldiers origins even today there are people who offer to seeing their family name on the wall trying to find at least some details about their deceased relatives. the only god stands watch over the whole of military glory only those meeting specific requirements can make it into this regiment soldiers must be told of slavic appearance and fully versed in old drill techniques. the architectural scale of the memorial project match the scope of the battle of stalingrad a fitting memorial was needed for the lost lives in nine hundred forty two the commander of the sixty second dummy the silly to recall was the architect advisor

he was immortalized by. the sculptor human to fight to the death. it takes two hundred steps from the foot of my of could a gun to reach its top one for each day of the battle song. in the square of sorrow stands a sculpture of a grieving mother. these walls are built from the ruins of stomping ground depicting soldiers as well as the slogan not a single step back. it took several years to find the image for the central monument. road you knew my that was in the motherland calls as a different meaning this is not the statue of liberty of course which implies freedom for the american people are statue is full of energy moral and military spirit the motherland coles is unique there is no such other statue in the world that's the roy. it's possible the sculptor's final design was inspired by the figures on paris's arc de triomphe or the figure of nike that he

saw on display in the movie. this statue of a woman with a sword in her hand and a fee a spirit was approved as a symbol of the motherland of the highest level. any of you knew first hand the horrors of. he served as a machine gun at before being wounded and returning to moscow in one nine hundred forty three. when the political for the will go on the also had a tremor in his hand to him as a merchant he was a sculptor now because he worked at all toward. the only way he was sculpting was he calm and could work fast and professionally you knew he was always doing something for you miss sculpting working with clay just so he could feel the way he did before the injury to on you i don't but my father told me that he had always been modeling something built with you and spent why he always had a party the matches and why as with him. he was always busy that's going to buy a little bit no matter if he was ill or feel. whether it was night or day it was

sculpting or maybe just needed to do it to feel alive or did someone once they hear . the grand memorial to the heroes of the battle of stalingrad it opened on october the fifteenth nine hundred sixty seven. all the party leaders of the soviet union together with the only brush never arrived soon after the opening ceremony of the monument fugitive started work on a new one hundred meter tall motherland statue to be delivered to kenya for the sculptor passed away before the project was realized.

i shall be soon which brightened a few. songs from phones to impressions. nice phones don't talk t.v. don't come. any is eve. eve to. some. folks. download the official auntie application to i phone all i pod touch from the i choose ops to. watch all th life on the go.

video on demand ati's my bold costs an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the altie dot com. mother mission free accreditation free zones for chargers free. range month free risk free studio tied free. download free blogs just plug in video for your media projects and a free medio dog r.t. dot com. during the construction of the motherland kohl's will need. it's lower and its upper parts were connected by an elevator fortunately it broke down this meant sculpturing again evil chet it would have to walk up and down two hundred steps to

inspect his money. only the personnel looking after the monument are allowed inside . hello mother. a year after the unveiling of the statue the issue of who is going to maintain this huge construction arose for the first time in the soviet union a team of mountain climbers was employed to look after the monument. we're going to hang this rope on the arm it's a good one. or put this one as will go on the trail. the red ropes are for descents white ones are for safety risking their lives climbers regularly check the condition of the motherland calls monument which deteriorated following the collapse of the soviet union nowadays specialists keep an eye on the joints regularly so that the limbs remain firm periodic late a special water repellent coating is applied to the statue but the solution does

not come cheap mountain climbers examine small mosques covering the statue in most cases they're just making a record there are more than a thousand of them here. now we're at a place of particular concern with the destruction is already visible here. more. this piece has bled off very easily video this is a serious defect the concrete broke away from the outer surface because water got into the crack or seeing as there was clay inside the crack began to grow squeezed against a chunk of concrete that this needs fixing immediately otherwise the process of destruction will continue. only the most professional climbers are allowed to work on a monument it's particularly important that they have extensive experience in

mountaineering in uneven terrain. the whole volgograd can be seen from the top of the motherland calls. working on the motherland cause it's like a hobby to me so this work is not for money. i spent my whole lifetime here. and we've worked him many times as there's a lot to do here i'm a native of volgograd and i'm proud having such a monument in our city. as we try to keep it in good condition to preserve it for future generations. if it is a war veteran one of the few builders of the monument who are still alive when construction began there was not even any grass that my of could gun in its place were about twelve hundred fifty deadly metal fragments per square meter the

motherland cause was built upon earth soaked with the blood of the soldiers. what what down there in this place there were. inside the workers could change their clothes and here we had our office and over there were two dug outs those who cast of the molds for the statue lived in them. while molders cost of the four welders inside the statue erected for internal politicians. numerous trucks brought in concrete from several plants. what could be a bomb that the trucks with concrete were arriving now installed day and night this was the first concrete monument in the world there were no such other sculptures made of reinforced concrete anywhere else all our sculptures are made of concrete such monuments hadn't existed before we were the first to build them. when

constructing such a huge monument the designers and builders could not foresee old possible issues. the ground is unreliable here and it being a builder i am greatly concerned about it we have to deal with this issue urgently i want the statute to stay as it is now. this is supported only by. this symbol of victory stems just like a chess piece it was dr of technical sciences nicholai nikitin who made the necessary calculations there were even plans for special needs which would make it possible to easily raise the statue if it then took the design is first calculating the exact center of gravity before setting up cables inside the statue but another issue with merged in the one nine hundred seventy s. during a strong wind the steel sword began to swing wildly it was replaced with a titanium version weighing fourteen tons. engineer alexander turnoff comes to the

statue once a week he checks all the cables inside to make sure they aren't overstretched and whether any metal has rusted the rim or the one hundred cables here each twenty meters long they pull together all of the internal parts of the statue. this more than we did there for example we can see the ropes that pull together the right forearm and the elbow of the arm which holds the sword. and what you could call them the muscles of the arm there are special sensors on the cables which monitor the tension they send this information to a micro processing unit installed further up. in the heart of the monument here all the monitoring machinery is installed previously to examine the construction and communicate with the employees this device is used with its help one could talk to any person no matter where they were in the sauder in the leg now but only one

person had to dial the number to ask the person situated inside saudi how was he doing what was the situation like. currently there's no such thing. today all this cumbersome equipment has been replaced with an ordinary laptop. and this kind of micro processing device. one of the main tasks of the statue supervisors is to watch for any deviations and when necessary take the correct action. that isn't the one nine hundred eighty s. we've been observing the foundation stabilisation we conduct g.-o. d. sic. dungog the leaning at the top the way the head is bent is approaching the critical point. we're watching the situation closely the constant monitoring and new calculations are all quiet. this is my favorite part of

the head. this is where the monitoring ends. and the pun romber of the city begins. the institute of physical education is situated close by models for the statue was selected from here in the one nine hundred fifty s. and came to you again studio in this factory to pose the working day of a model here lasted four hours. here in one little brick shops. that was fifty years ago a very long time ago. here. try to place. catarina did not realize what kind of project she was participating in she was simply curious. as i

remember i was holding a rule in there i turned. it was supposed to be a sword but the left hand was free. later thereafter in a scene cloth going you and there was some kind of a big fund there to make the fabric flutter. the counter ino wasn't invited to the opening ceremony she recognized the familiar features later when she saw the monument for herself. i was looking at her and wanted to see comedy. really it seemed to me that the position. full of pride was similar to mine. i wanted to believe i looked like her. is the woman who became the face of the motherland or is it just a result of the stutters imagination. some give gain even trying to answer this

question he spent six years writing a manuscript about his famous father but he died without having published it. sculptor's grandson is now the keeper of the manuscript. here's a small excerpt from the manuscript the mother of. the sculpture from a very beautiful woman the woman was a classic example of the legendary russian beauty. of course in the motherland cool's you can see similarities with the famous nike of some of the trace. the original is kept in the womb for its own accord so what my grandfather saw her and she might have served as a fine example of a great statue for him but of course this female figure is a generalization if you look at the statue and his wife vera you know well to me they look alike that is because of the study because. it's clear that there are similarities when a picture of the sculptor's wife is placed side by side with the statue. chatted to

was a man of few words he expressed what he wanted to say with his hands that's why specialists and relatives are not surprised that the word devoted to the most significant period in his life was modeled on his wife. which is your scope of one's future to just said he had so many ideas that he would need a dozen life at all events to realize them each telling or buy them but i know that's really the case with the need reamed of new projects because he wanted people to remember him as an artist when body to heroism because of those people moving else history has shown that the artist succeeded in as endeavor every year nearly two million people come to the foot of the monument symbolizing russia's triumph in the second world war.

the people of the united states and their friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder is a regime as an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons and let there be no doubt about we know for a fact that there are limits there. is we're just being carried out into the direction of dr david kay respected scientist and former u.n. inspector was leading the weapons search in iraq we are determined to take this apart you have a tremendous a group of dedicated american men and women involved in this with the best assets of the intelligence community can provide. data cheney is not going to be done with this for quite some time david kay wants more time and he says it could take another six to nine months to make a definitive finding ministration is asking congress for hundreds of millions more six hundred million dollars to fund

a continuing search we have not yet found shiny pointy things that i would call a weapon before we can draw from conclusions we need to let the iraq survey group complete its work. we were all wrong probably in my judgment and that is most disturbing. sometimes the true patriots takes the unpopular course but helps the country and for the stakes and even if they come this way at least from tonight patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels and i think these are scoundrels they have no argument now they have no defense for what they did the country is in a terrible international security situation and i think it's perilous so they're attacking the patriotism of others.

that. it. leaked.