Each of these videos could be used as a full-fledged promo for international tourists, and among the locations mentioned in them one could see not only the squares, museums and monuments, but also... a Cemetery for the Soviet soldiers, situated on the outskirts of Cologne. These videos testified that that project participants were able, willing and enthusiastic to work together.

At the beginning of 2022, Volgograd Institute of Management, a branch of the RANEPA, launched of a new online project of a similar nature – "Same or Different", dedicated to the most pressing socio-cultural problems that the youths in Russia and Germany currently have to face. Once again, it was aimed at school and university students in Volgograd and its partner-city of Cologne. In less than a month, the project organizers received 19 applications from the potential participants!

• Where can a student find a part-time job and how to combine it with studies?

• How to maintain understanding between family members?

• How to deal with loneliness?

• How to make your local wonders of nature last as long as possible?

Speaking on these and other topics, the young people did not only point out the existing problems, but also suggested the ways of solving them. 

Despite that fact that the project participants had made most of their presentations before February 24, 2022, the difficulties discussed in them have not disappeared. Moreover, a new one has added itself to their list: to maintain educational, cultural, student ties between the residents of Volgograd and its partner-cities.

The history of the international twinning movement has already seen the times when the links between civil communities were going strong even when the official relations between their countries had reached the rock bottom.

Therefore, we are announcing the start of a new series of publications – dedicated to the participants of the project "Topical Social and Cultural Issues of the Young People in Germany and Russia".