MOSCOW — When local officials bearing flowers and a medal arrived to pay tribute to a 93-year-old grandmother and war veteran at her home north of Moscow, they didn’t get quite the welcome they expected.

As one of the officials leaned in for a hug, the honoree’s granddaughter jumped in to stop it.

“I said: ‘This is my grandma, my apartment,’” recalled Yevgeniya Ovod, who had been doing her best to keep her grandmother isolated from the outside world and the coronavirus. “‘I’m asking you to leave.’ Honestly, I pushed her out.”

Such ceremonies to celebrate war heroes have been happening in homes and schools and at veterans’ unions all across Russia ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II.

But the coronavirus has turned the festivities into a life-or-death matter for the country’s dwindling number of living veterans of the war.