Counted by russian police, they are present during such events.
It’s about 1% of total population of Russia.
EDIT: found official source
For some reason I forgot to add that it was during christmas. This probably confused a lot of people.
That seems like a really low number. According to the article it’s almost half the number of people from a few years ago. And even that seems low considering there should be something like >60 million Russians in the ROC.
1.4 million people is less than 2% of the total number of Russian Orthodox Christians.
Maybe half of participants from few years ago now are busy with hiding in trenches or being dead?
Meanwhile state-funded program of building churches instead of schools and polyclinics is still going.
The rest may have visited God in another way
Mods, I found official police source. Should I replace URL? Official source don’t show historic data though.