VLADIVOSTOK, February 28 (Itar-Tass) – The 2013 Universiade flame on Thursday departed from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk. The Torch Relay ceremony to the next city - Khabarovsk – was held in the library of the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), where the capsule with the flame has been kept for a month. The Torch Relay will pass through the streets of Khabarovsk on March 1.
In the capital of the Far East, the Universiade Flame will be accompanied by six Keepers, who were selected from 100 best volunteers of the Primorsky Territory. All the Flame Keepers, selected for the ceremony of its handing over to the next Russian city, had taken part in the relay stage in Vladivostok, which took place on January 25. It was attended by 60 torchbearers – Universiade ambassadors, athletes and volunteers of the Primorsky Territory. The symbol of the World Student Games was carried 15.5 km through the streets of Vladivostok.
The relay started on the campus of the Far Eastern Federal University on the Russky Island and ended at the Opera and Ballet Theatre, after which the Flame Keepers gave the lantern with the main symbol of the World Student Games to the research library of the Far Eastern Federal University for keeping. On February 8, the exhibition dedicated to the Universiade in Kazan, at which all Vladivostok residents could see the symbol of the Student Games, was opened there.
The Russian leg of the Universiade Torch Relay began in Vladivostok on January 25. Travelling from west to east, the Flame will be carried through Russia’s 30 top student cities such as Yakutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Arkhangelsk, Stavropol, Pyatigorsk, Sochi, Rostov-on-Don, Vladimir, Perm, Izhevsk, Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg, Ufa, St. Petersburg, Moscow and other cities and pass through 43 municipal districts of the Republic of Tatarstan, finishing its odyssey at the football stadium in Kazan on July 6, on the day of the 2013 Summer Universiade Opening Ceremony.
The ceremony of lighting the Flame of the 27th Summer Universiade of 2013 was held on July 12, 2012. It took place in Paris at Paris Sorbonne University where in 1923 the first International Student Games took place. On July 15, the lantern with the Universiade Flame was placed on board the Sedov barque in the French port of Brest, from where the oldest Russian sailboat departed to circumnavigate the globe. On the vessel the Flame was delivered through two oceans to the South Korean port of Busan from where was transported by air to Vladivostok.