Grown-up girl and ‘polite man’ who inspired the monument’s author meet in Crimea

Two prototypes of the ‘Polite People’ monument installed in the centre of the Crimean capital have met in Simferopol – a girl, Anna Solovyan, and a Special Forces fighter, Mikhail.

A video of their touching interaction on Lenin Square in March 2014 became one of the symbols of the Russian Spring, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

On the eve of the 9th anniversary of Crimea’s reunification with Russia, Crimean TV broadcast a story about the heroine of the video, who was 6 years old in March ,2014. The girl approached a special forces soldier and hugged him, then kissed him on the cheek.

My mother wanted to approach the ‘polite man’, but adults were not allowed, only children,” Anya said. – And the scene in that video is absolutely sincere. I was ashamed at first, because I’m a little 6-year-old girl, and here is such a soldier.

It was not possible to find the soldier then. But now Mikhail participates in SMO, was in the Crimea on vacation and preparing to return to the front. He met the girl Anya nine years later.

Mikhail presented Anna with a basket of flowers, a “teddy bear from Mishka” and the same chocolate which he presented to the girl in March 2014. Only now the girl is a high school graduate, and at the time she met the fighter she was just about to go to the first grade.

I had Last Bell today. And when I met you, I was just about to go to school, but now we met when I was graduating,” stressed Anya.