Right-wing organizers built a giant statue of a Russian propagandist in Minecraft for a digital rally that saw over 10,000 people show up — and then the server crashed

• Russian right-wing organizers built a monument to a dead Russian propagandist in Minecraft.
• The rally, held ahead of Russia's May Day, last week garnered 12,000 digital visitors.

Right-wing Russian organizers held a rally in Minecraft last week, building a giant statue of a dead Russian propagandist that garnered 12,000 visitors before the server crashed.

The event, held ahead of Russia's May Day, was organized by the right-wing populist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, according to Meduza. The group held the event in honor of their founder Vladimir Zhirinovsky's birthday last week, Meduza reported.

A video posted on Twitter by NEXTA shows one view of the rally.

About 12,000 Minecraft users visited the monument event to celebrate. LDPR spokesman Alexander Dyupin said in a Telegram message that the server promptly crashed and could not accommodate more players, according to a translation from Meduza.

Zhirinovsky, who died last year, was an ultranationalist politician and propagandist considered to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.

According to BBC News, much of his career was filled with claims that Russian troops would expand their territory across other countries and regions. He received widespread attention for appearing to predict Russia's invasion of Ukraine down to the February 22 date.

He baselessly told BCC in 2018 that Ukraine was Russian territory: "It's our territory; it's our people. It's part of our country."