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Kremlin, over 2,000 buildings go dark for Earth Hour in Moscow

Earth Hour is an annual international event held by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on last Saturday in March

© Alina Zherdeva/TASS

MOSCOW, March 28. /TASS/. The outside lights were switched off at the Kremlin and 2,000 more landmarks in Moscow on Saturday night to mark the Earth Hour global movement.

"We must understand the most important thing that this movement is not aimed at switching light off. Millions of people take part in it worldwide as they are worried about what is happening to our Earth, what will be tomorrow and what will be left to our children," Russian Natural Resources and Environment Minister Alexander Kozlov told reporters on Red Square before the event.

Earth Hour is an annual international event held by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on last Saturday in March. It aims to encourage people around the world to treat the nature and its resources with greater care. Participants of the movement - private individuals, organizations, municipal and commercial agencies and enterprises - turn off lights in residential buildings as well as illumination of famous city landmarks and monuments for one hour between 20:30 and 21:30 local time (the movement is not applied to street lights, plane navigation flights and traffic lights).

"The theme of this Earth Hour is the openness of information about the environment. The 2020 events showed us what can happen if the released information is unreliable or if it is not released at all. We remember some incidents, but the damage they caused could have been much less for both humans and nature," WWF Russia Director Dmitry Gorshkov added.

Traditionally, the Kremlin, the official residence of the Russian president, and the House of Government turned off their exterior lights for an hour between 20:30 and 21:30 Moscow time. In accordance with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision, the Moscow Kremlin has been annually dimming its lights for Earth Hour since 2013.

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