I am obsessed with Victory Day salads (‘for men’). I think it is a combination of sincere effort and inappropriateness as a means of commemoration/celebration
Some selected pictures:
1/ Standard ‘Tank’ Salad
2/ Red Star Tank Salad
Can you imagine the amount of mayonnaise that goes into this!?
3/ 9th May Salad with St George’s Ribbon
4/ Soldier in the Trenches Salad
5/ Woohoo Kremlin, Fireworks and Day of Commemorating Horrific War and Mass Death Salad
6/ Tank Shooting a Parachutist Salad
7/ Battleship Salad 🥗
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my favourite salad: ‘the mass grave salad’. Dr James Rann featured it in a great article on Russian salads but the link doesn’t work now.
So instead, here’s a St George’s Ribbon ‘Victory Day’ sushi roll
8/ I have now found a photo of the mass grave salad thanks to @venturecommunis
The fake gun (apparently made out of ribbons by the salad maker’s son) is a lovely touch
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
A thread of Victory Day and why its celebration is so important to Russia's ongoing war on Ukraine
🧵
1/
9th May is the day when Russians celebrate WWII, or the Great Patriotic War (as they call the Soviet experience of WWII, 1941-1945).
To Westerners, Victory Day probably conjures up images of military parades on Red Square, soldiers marching, a general 'celebration' of war 2/
That element is certainly there, as is an inappropriate commercialisation of the day, including dress up for kids, stalls selling WWII uniforms and all manner of tat 3/
Russian efforts to destroy Ukraine can hardly be overstated
But, now and over the last 8.5 years, it is often the small things that reveal the depth of the Kremlin’s and its many supporters’ hatred towards Ukraine
1/
Eg pro-Kremlin Telegram accounts have started deliberately misspelling Киев (Kiev) as Кыев (Kyev) to mock Ukrainian requests that Western orgs use the Ukrainian spelling of their own cities’ names (Kyiv, Kharkiv, etc) 2/
This mockery of the Ukrainian language is centuries old but since 2014 it’s a daily part of political debate. News discussion shows refer to 🇺🇦 snidely as ‘Незалежна’, the 🇺🇦 word for ‘independent’, to ridicule Ukrainians’ yearning for sovereignty & idea they cld be sovereign 3/
Russian nationalist channels are sharing this old video of (recently deceased) Zhirinovsky talking abt how Russia has been saving the world for 100 years but gets no gratitude. This idea that the world owes 🇷🇺 a sphere of influence/great power status is persistent and pernicious
This is most obvious wrt WWII (see Putin’s National Interest article abt West letting Red Army bleed out and constant sniping that Poland, Baltics and most of Soviet-occupied CEE saw it as, well, an occupation not as genuine liberation 2/
But also with the fall of the USSR. There’s anger that eg Germans aren’t more grateful Russia let them reunify. In 2014 esp there were lots of comparisons between Crimea ‘rejoining’ Russia and German reunification. They’ve started again recently 3/ru.krymr.com/amp/news-lavro…
As before (MH17, gas attacks in Syria, etc), Russia reacted to condemnation of Bucha slaughter by
1) spreading lots of alternative takes to distract &sow doubt then after some time passed
2) pushing a counter narrative coherent w their broader line (here: denazification)1/2
So while dif sources voiced dif versions this morn, now most 🇷🇺 sources are cohering around the line that Bucha’s dead civilians were pro-Russians killed by Azov battalion as part of their genocide against Russians 2/
Some 🇷🇺 propagandists also claiming Bucha as proof Russian troops mustn’t retreat or leave 🇺🇦 bc if they do then the Ukrainians/Azov will unleash further genocidal killings of Russians, Russian speakers& those ‘who recognise the results of WWII’ eg t.me/SolovievLive/9…
3/