1/ Anti-Ukrainian paranoia has effectively resulted in the colours yellow and blue being banned in Russia, with objects – and even people – wearing those colours being removed or covered up. Items affected have included hair, clothes, crests, buildings, and artworks. ⬇️
2/ The anti-yellow and blue hysteria isn't officially sanctioned. The State Duma's Deputy Speaker, Vladislav Davankov, has asked the Interior Ministry "to bring clarity and publish a clarification that the combination of yellow and blue is not grounds for cases and detentions".
3/ Devankov commented: "Patriotic vigilantism reaches the point of absurdity ... If it continues in this vein, soon we'll start shooting blue tits in Russia, hundreds of brands will have to be shut down for their yellow and blue logos, ...
4/ ... and at least one political party – the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia – will be banned. Obviously, this path is absurd."
This thread compiles cases of action being taken against yellow and blue in Russia. I'll add to it progressively as more cases come to light.
5/ 🔺 A Hindu man in Moscow was arrested for wearing yellow trousers with a blue top. His trousers were confiscated and he was sent for trial, as was a janitor arrested for wearing a blue and yellow jacket.
7/ 🔺 A headteacher in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug reported a schoolgirl to the police for wearing blue and lime-green (not yellow!) braids. They investigated her mother for "non-fulfillment of parental duties" but did not pursue the case. t.me/horizontal_rus…
8/ 🔺 Yellow and blue public benches in Bryansk were repainted overnight after residents complained on social media. t.me/horizontal_rus…
9/ 🔺 A yellow & blue painted apartment block in Susuman in the Magadan region was repainted in orange after a resident complained: "Tomorrow this picture will be on the front page of some ghoul news with a headline that the residents ... support Ukraine". t.me/horizontal_rus…
10/🔺 A nine-year-old boy in the Kirov region was beaten up for using a yellow and blue inflatable plastic sledge. t.me/pdmnews/56487
11/🔺 The College of National Economy and Environmental Engineering in the Kaluga region refused to repaint the walls of its gym after complaints that they should be in "more patriotic colours". t.me/pdmnews/52328
12/ 🔺 A man on a Moscow region train pulled a yellow and blue backpack off a young boy, telling him, "What is this, Ukraine? These cunts shouldn't give it to us." pdmnews.ru/26850/
13/ 🔺 The yellow and blue seats in the Tuymaada football stadium in Yakutsk were all ripped out and are to be replaced with ones in the colours of the Russian flag. t.me/pdmnews/48252
14/🔺 Khrabrovo airport in Kaliningrad has replaced its yellow-and-blue logo. The yellow in the logo, which was meant to represent the sun, has been changed to red. pdmnews.ru/25599/
15/🔺 Outraged residents in Krasnoyarsk forced a local maintenance company to repaint yellow and blue concrete curbs, although it had used the same colours for years. t.me/pdmnews/48696
16/ 🔺 Police in Moscow apparently confused the yellow-and-blue flag of the Russian republic of Tuva with that of Ukraine and refused to allow a Tuvan politician to display it in public. t.me/pdmnews/50505
17/ 🔺 New Year's festive installations in Rostov-on-Don, painted in yellow, blue and red – the region's traditional colours - were repainted after residents complained that they looked like "khokhol [Ukrainian] flags". t.me/horizontal_rus…
18/🔺 A yellow and blue sculpture of a rhino, installed by an Ulan-Ude art museum in 2020 in colours evoking "the sun and sky", was repainted in grey in May 2022. t.me/horizontal_rus…
19/ 🔺 The Soviet-era yellow and blue crest of Murmansk's coat of arms was painted over in April 2023, as was the side of an apartment block painted in the same traditional regional colours. t.me/horizontal_rus…
20/ 🔺 The yellow in the yellow-and-blue painted facade of a Kirov apartment block was painted over in red in order to "denazify" it. t.me/horizontal_rus…
21/ 🔺Man arrested in Leningrad region for displaying the yellow and blue flag of the Russian Air Force:
22/ 🔺 A 50 cm high fence in Cherbarkul, painted in blue and yellow, was repainted in red when a neighbour complained after the paint was renewed. "For two years she looked at the fence with hatred from her window." t.me/sotaproject/56…
23/🔺A politician in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug complained about the "yellow and blue" lighting of a public artwork, blaming the colours on the British technicians who installed it, but was informed that it was actually blue and green. t.me/astrapress/283…
24/ 🔺 Singing toy sheep in Ukrainian folk costume mistaken for a bomb in Buryatia.
1/ The near-simultaneous shutdown of Starlink and Telegram are having a massive impact on Russian forces in Ukraine, according to Russian warbloggers. They say that recent Ukrainian advances are a direct consequence of the problems that are being caused. ⬇️
2/ 'Two Majors' writes:
"[W]e can say that it was precisely the combined communication problems that have led to the localized Ukrainian Armed Forces offensives in the south of Kupyansk and in the Zaporizhzhia direction in recent days.
3/ "We didn't make this up; veterans from various parts of the front told us so.
Why are we so angry? Our people are dying there. Our comrades. And if our grumbling can make even a small difference, then it won't have been for nothing that we've all gathered here."
1/ Russia may be preparing to announce a mass mobilisation, a bad peace deal with the US, or confiscate people's savings to fund the war effort, according to Russian warbloggers. They suspect that the government wants to ban Telegram to block public dissent over such moves. ⬇️
2/ Russian officials have hinted strongly that Telegram, which is currently being slowed down and partly blocked by the government, faces a total ban by 1 April 2026. 'Alex Parker Returns' writes (in a since-deleted post) that the government faces a dilemma:
3/ "Either capitulate in accordance with the renewed spirit of Anchorage—freezing the line of contact, surrendering the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and other whimsical proposals that our esteemed partners will come up with along the way, …
1/ An ongoing epidemic of murder and extortion in the Russian army has reached such a level that Russian warbloggers say the army has become a "gangster supermarket". "Extortion under the threat of death has become an entire shadow industry", says one Russian blogger. ⬇️
2/ Fresh reports of men being "zeroed out" by their commanders are published almost daily. Recently leaked data from the Russian human rights commissioner records over 6,000 complaints in 6 months from soldiers and their relatives about abuses in the army.
3/ Corrupt Russian commanders routinely extort their men with the threat of having them murdered, or sending them into unsurvivable assaults. "Life support" bribes – paid either by the men or their relatives to keep them out of assaults – are commonplace.
1/ Why are Russian soldiers so ill-equipped that they are forced to rely on combat donkeys? Russian warbloggers draw a direct connection to cases of egregious military corruption, such as the recent conviction of Rear Admiral Nikolai Kovalenko for stealing 592 million rubles. ⬇️
2/ Kovalenko's case – for which he was fined just 500,000 rubles ($6,519) and spared jail – has attracted outrage from many Russian commentators. As they point out, it is merely one of many similar cases over the past three decades.
1/ Ukraine's rapid advances in recent days have revealed that many Russian claims of capturing settlements along the length of the front were false or tenous. Russian warbloggers complain that this has exposed more lies by their side's commanders. 📷
2/ Rybar provides a gloomy assessment of Ukraine's progress:
"The situation on the western flank of the Zaporizhzhia front has deteriorated sharply over the past 24 hours."
3/ "The enemy is attempting to cut off the penetration toward Zaporizhzhia along the shore of the former Kakhovka Reservoir. Ukrainian forces have launched an offensive along a sector approximately 20 kilometers wide.
1/ A retired Russian rear admiral has been convicted of stealing over half a billion rubles allocated to repairing anti-aircraft missile systems. He was fined 500,000 rubles and immediately released from custody. ⬇️
2/ Rear Admiral Nikolai Kovalenko was found guilty yesterday in the Moscow Region Garrison Court of organising a large-scale embezzlement of Russian Ministry of Defence funds allocated to four contracts for the repair of anti-aircraft missile systems between 2013 and 2017.
3/ The fraud involved purchasing faulty components from Ukraine in 2012 – before the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of the Donbas – for only 40 million rubles ($521,000) and passing them off as refurbished ones. A total of 592 million rubles ($7.7 m) was reportedly stolen.