The sources cited in the news – both the official website of Coventry City Council and the web edition of Kyodo News – can be read online.

Having done this, we will not find in the materials of the Japanese newspaper and the Coventry City Council any mentions of "severing the twinning relations", only of the suspension of ties and exchanges ("halting the exchanges" and "pausing the twinning links", to be exact).

As for the referenced article by Kyodo News in particular, what the Hiroshima official actually said in is that "the City of Hiroshima canceled the dispatch of its official delegation to Volgograd in September".

It should be noted that the suspension of sister-city relations (as well as their subsequent renewal) has already happened in the history of the international twinning movement. Moreover, in the 1980s, Coventry had already halted the official relations with Volgograd, and not because of major international changes, but because a new (and opposing) party came to power in their City Council.

At that time, it was the residents of both our cities who kept the twinning relations afloat, because the exchanges and correspondence between them continued no matter what. Now the situation is repeating itself: as the team of the public diplomacy project "Volgograd-Coventry Digital Tablecloth" "- 80 years of mutual support" stated on March 29, the modern version of the historical tablecloth will be completed regardless of the political situation.

"The project team did not even pose to think whether to continue what they started or not, due to the current international situation," said Natalia Oreshkina, head of the "Lidery Peremen" autonomous non-profit organization.