So, over in Moscow, they’ve been having the Kremlin Zoria. Think of it as a version of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

The festival, known as Kremlin Zoria, has already
drawn favourable comparisons with the Edinburgh tattoo since its first
performance on Thursday.

Cossack dancers and Russian mounted guardsmen
delighted a 7,000-strong audience in front of the famous domes of St
Basil’s cathedral before the Commonwealth pipes and drums emerged from
the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate in a shroud of dry ice.

The event culminated in a spectacular finale,
with over 1,000 soldiers, accompanied by a choir, massed on the cobbles
of the square to perform excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture,
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and the Coldstream Guards’ famous arrangement of
Amazing Grace.

The final salute, accompanied by a blaze of fireworks, was taken by Prince Michael of Kent.

Prince Michael is an interesting choice. He does speak Russian, has been involved in a number of ventures over there in recent years. But peraps this is the real reason:

Tsar Nicholas II

Prince Michael of Kent.

They are, after all, related (a great nephew, second cousin, something like that). Actually, I’ve read a novel where the solution to Russia’s problems of the 90s was to put him on the Throne.