Russians have celebrated the National Unity Day in the capital, Moscow.

Russian media said tens of thousands of people gathered on a central street in Moscow on Wednesday.

On November 4, 1612, the Russian popular uprising against the occupation of Polish forces drove them from the Kremlin.

The participants in the march chanted slogans in support of President Vladimir Putin, who addressed the crowd near the St. Basil’s Cathedral at Red Square.

St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, canceled the planned Unity Day rally. The city mourns the victims of the October 31 crash of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt that killed 224 people, most of them Russian holiday-makers returning from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Images showed President Putin laying flowers at the monument to Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky, two major militia leaders in 1611-1612 who helped liberate Moscow from the Polish occupation.

Moscow established the National Unity Day 10 years ago and replaced it with a previous holiday on November 7, which was called the Day of Consent and Reconciliation.

Russian media say the popularity of this holiday grows each year with a poll conducted in 2014 showing that 63 percent of respondents thought that it is an important holiday, an increase from 57 percent in 2013.