Putin “pays” a crowd to attend his meeting in Moscow surrounded by anti-aircraft missiles

Vladimir Putin was surrounded by Pantsir-S1 air defense missiles as he took the stage for a pro-war rally with a rent-a-crowd in Moscow today.

Putin appeared at the “Honor to the Fatherland” rally in Moscow yesterday, hours after delivering a two-hour State of the Union address.

Footage captured outside Moscow State University, where the rally took place, shows the missile systems guarding the security-obsessed dictator, while others could be seen on nearby rooftops.

Similar air defense systems have been seen near Putin’s homes before, but never outside the university, which overlooks the Luzhniki stadium, where he raged west for seven minutes.

The event was attended by a carefully screened group of mostly government employees who were paid cash for their attendance.

Some admitted they got carried away because they were threatened with being fired from their state jobs.

“We were forced,” said an employee of the Nizhny Novgorod District Council in Moscow.

This was also stated by the workers of the Chertanovo district council.

Others said they came for free food.

Those present included employees of the Moscow Metro who were instructed not to hear the Ukrainian colors yellow and blue.

Those who came were promised 500 rubles – £5.50.

Participants had to show all passport details.

A vacancy states: “People (18+) are wanted for a concert in Luzhniki. It will be fun, but you also get 500 rubles.”

Universities were looking for students to take part in the pro-war event in support of Putin.

The event was hosted by TV presenter Yulia Baranovskaya, 42, ex-partner of former Arsenal star Andrei Arshavin.

In his speech yesterday, Putin claimed he did not start the war in Ukraine and blamed the West for the continued failures at the front.

He claimed that the Ukrainians were waiting for his troops to “come to the rescue” and that the West had unleashed a “genie in a bottle”.

Putin said: “They started the war and we used force to stop it.”

“They spent $150 billion to support the military regime in Kiev.”

He then went on to tell the audience that every Russian has a “great responsibility” to “protect our people on our historic land.”

But during the speech, not everything went according to plan for the dictator as hackers attacked and blocked millions of devices used to broadcast the speech.

In the web links of state broadcasters, instead of the speech of the Russian president to his parliament, the message “Mistake 500” appeared.

It seemed that the issue reached the state broadcaster – All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) – in all 11 Russian time zones.

State news agency RIA Novosti said the outage was caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack.

Radio Mayak – also suspended – said its web channels had been attacked by hackers.

.