Lights will also go out on more than 300 buildings in Moscow, including St Basil’s Cathedral, the GUM Department Store, the Government House of the Russian Federation, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the State Duma, the Moscow State University building at Vorobyovy Gory and others.
Earth Hour is an international environmental protection event organised by the World Wildlife Fund to raise global awareness of the climate change issue. The idea behind the event is that all around the world people voluntarily switch off the lights at exactly the same time for one hour, and decorative lighting at different countries’ symbolic buildings is also switched off.
Earth Hour is the largest mass action in the history of humanity. Just last year alone, it was supported by 150 nations, approximately 7,000 cities and over 2 billion people, including 16 million Russians.
Russia has been taking part in Earth Hour since 2009, and last year, following President Putin’s decision, the Moscow Kremlin participated in the event for the first time.