CHAPTER 10 THE LETTER OF THE WAR

The Russian military chose the letter Z as the symbol for its invasion of Ukraine.

That’s a not-too-subtle way of identifying their Number One target: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The letter started appearing on Russian armour being assembled near the border with Ukraine in mid-February.

Since then, it has been adopted by supporters of Russia’s actions, even spawning a merchandising industry within Russia.

There are several theories about the use of Z, the obvious one being the name of Ukraine’s resilient president.

Other letters, including O, X, A and V also have appeared. The letters on the hardware were usually framed by squares, triangles, and other painted shapes.

As a letter, Z does not exist in the Cyrillic Russian alphabet and one theory was that Z possibly stood for Zapad (west) and the letters being used represented the areas in which the armor was stationed.

Others believe the letters were drawn on tanks and other equipment to try to avoid friendly fire.

The Russian defence ministry did not mention any of the theories but posted on its Instagram channel that Z meant Za pobedu (“for victory”) and V stood for “power of truth.”

Z soon became the symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

London’s Guardian newspaper reported that just three days after the invasion, state-funded network RT announced on its social media channels that it was selling Z merchandise, including T-shirts and hoodies, to show support.

Some young Russians were seen wearing a Z shirt. The letter also was painted on old Soviet-era apartment blocks and street advertising signs.

The Guardian said schools had also posted images of children standing in a Z formation and that one online image showed terminally ill children from a hospice forming a Z to support the invasion of Ukraine.

The symbol has also had some exposure outside Russia.

It must be noted that support for the Russian action within Russia itself was not universal.

OVD-Info, a voluntary organization that monitors arrests during protests said almost 15,000 people were detained at rallies across Russia in the first three weeks of the Invasion.

In one demonstration in which 8oo people were arrested, a reporter from AFP said some of the riot police had the letter Z in the colors of the Russian flag on their helmets.

Dressed in a yellow hat and blue jacket, 20-year-old Kristina said she was “expressing her protest” by wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

“It’s scary to go outside, of course. They are detaining everyone. Lots of my friends have been detained in the past few days, some were even expelled from university,” she told AFP.

In a move that would have caught the attention of the viewers of one of Russian TV’s most-watched news broadcasts, Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at state-controlled Channel 1, appeared behind a newsreader holding a sign saying “no war.” She also made an anti-war video.

Officials detained her for 14 hours and fined 30,000 rubles ($US 280) for making the video.

In the video, she called on the Russian people to protest the war, saying only they have the power to “stop all this madness.”

“Don’t be afraid of anything. They can’t imprison us all,” she said.

Her protest would have been the first time many Russians would have seen or heard the word “war” used in connection with Ukraine.

While the rule requiring Ukrainian men to stay and fight while women and children fled divided many Ukrainian families, there is division among Russian families as well, between those who backed the war and those who opposed it.

The opinion sometimes seemed to divide along generational lines.

Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Center in Moscow said: “In broad terms, younger Russians are less likely to have anti-Ukrainian sentiments. We have seen that the anti-war protests have also largely involved younger people.

“A lot of how you perceive the war depends on where you get your news,” he said. “If you watch television, you are simply more likely to toe the official line. And older people tend to watch more TV.

“We see that a majority of Russians appear to support the country’s actions, at least the way these actions are presented to them by the media,” Kolesnikov said.

It was unsurprising, given the sensitivity of the topic, that the war had created tensions between families and friends: “It is very hard for people to accept that their side are actually the bad guys.”