The Russian equivalent of Santa Claus, Ded Moroz, set off from his official estate in Veliky Ustyug along with the team of NTV channel on their fourth grandiose voyage across Russia.
This year, Puteshestvie Deda Moroza s NTV (The Journey of Santa Claus with NTV), will cover the whole country and pass through 28 cities: Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Barnaul, Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Perm, Kazan, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Stavropol, Krasnodar, Voronezh, Tula, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Cherepovets, Saint Petersburg, Balashikha, Podolsk, Schelkovo, Korolev, Mytischi, Ramensky and Moscow. The charity is supported by the government of the Vologda region.
In his three years of travels, the winter wizard travelled 40,000 kilometers together with NTV, visited more than 260 social institutions and 220 low-income and large families, all the while handing out 325 tons of gifts.
Ded Moroz fulfilled the most sincere and unusual wishes during this time. A single father of three sons in Novosibirsk received a car, while a young ballerina from Barnaul watched Swan Lake at the legendary Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg. The boy Sasha from Yekaterinburg drove a real train, while the Rybakov family from Izhevsk got a new stove in their banya. In Voronezh, Ded Moroz flew on a helicopter with the girl Masha, in Rostov he gifted a plow to Tamara and her five children, while in Kemerovo he gave a family a cow called Nochka.
Moreover, the show Puteshestvie Deda Moroza s NTV, along with the charity fund Ty Super! launched a joint action #YADEDMOROZ (#IAMSANTACLAUS). As part of the initiative, anyone who wants to help can send the words #YADEDMOROZ to the short number provided with the donation amount. All donations will go to charity.
As has become tradition, Ded Moroz’s winter journey with NTV will end with celebrations at the Ledovaya Moskva festival venue on Poklonnaya Gora.