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Night Wolves motorcyclists head to Europe to mark Victory Day

Motorcade participants were not planning to alter the route after Poland had barred their ride via its territory

© Mikhail Pochuyev/TASS

MOSCOW, April 25. /TASS/. The Night Wolves bikers have set off on a ride to Berlin, marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, the club’s spokeswoman told TASS on Saturday.

"The journey has begun," she said adding everything was going according to the plan.

Earlier, she said that the Night Wolves motorcyclists were not planning to alter the route after Poland had barred their ride via its territory.

The spokeswoman said that the motorcyclists would be able to get to the Polish border in a span of 24 hours.

"[Russian western city of] Smolensk is today, then Belarus and in a day, I think, Poland," she said.

No certain information is available as of yet whether Alexander "Surgeon" Zaldostanov, the club’s leader, would go to Berlin. His passport is at an embassy but the spokeswoman did not specify at which one.

On Friday, Poland’s Foreign Ministry said the motorcade participants were denied entry to the country as Warsaw had failed to obtain "the required information fully."

Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded that all the information had been submitted in time.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin regretted that Poland had made a decision to ban the Night Wolves motorcyclists’ ride through the country’s territory.

The Night Wolves biker club had planned to begin their journey on April 25 in Moscow and to finish it in Berlin on May 9, marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany by riding through Minsk, Wroclaw, Brno, Bratislava, Vienna, Munich and Prague.

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