In January it was announced that Pavel Zaifidi, an educator in the central Kostroma region and the local coordinator of the pro-Kremlin All-Russia Popular Front (ONF), who specializes in work with children who have learning disabilities, had won a 2.2 million ruble ($30,250) federal grant to develop a “youth organization” called Health Guarantee.
The Russian word for “guarantee” is spelled with the Latin letter Z.
According to the announcement, the grant will be used to develop a program of “adaptive physical training” and “inclusive practices” for children with Down syndrome and other disabilities. In an interview with RFE/RL, Zaifidi said he couldn’t answer specific questions about the project because the money would only be received later this month.
The main theme is to illustrate positively our traditional cultural values and to humorously mock superficial Western ones, like tolerance."-- Former Rostov Mayor Konstantin Shevkoplyas
Zaifidi’s social media pages, however, have attracted criticism since Moscow launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine last February. He has repeatedly posted photographs of the children with whom he works holding posters supporting the war and featuring pro-war symbols, including the Latin letters Z and V and the black-and-orange St. George ribbon.
But people who know Zaifidi caution against judging him hastily.
He is a “real teacher” who “is passionate about his work,” said one colleague, who asked not to be identified, told RFE/RL.
“Does he support what is happening in Ukraine?” she said. “Does he have a choice? If you want to get something done, you have to play by the rules.”
Ilya Shepelin, a Russian journalist who monitors Russian government disinformation and propaganda on the YouTube program Zomboyashchik, agreed.
“I am sure these children really need help -- special equipment, medicine, treatment, and so on. But these days the government, it seems, is not just giving money away without strings, but rather in exchange for supporting the ‘special military operation,’” Shepelin said, using the Kremlin’s mandatory euphemism for its war against Ukraine. “The government isn’t going to support the needy just because it should. You have to feel sorry for teachers under such circumstances.”
As the invasion of Ukraine approaches the one-year mark on February 24, the Kremlin and its proxies in local government and government-friendly political and social organizations have stepped up efforts to insinuate the pro-war symbols into every facet of the lives of ordinary Russians. Just weeks before the invasion, the government announced it would spend 319 billion rubles ($4.4 billion) on state media in 2022-24. In addition, the Kremlin’s program of presidential grants expects to hand out 4.3 billion rubles ($59 million) “to support socially oriented nonprofit organizations” like Zaifidi’s.
At the same time, the Kremlin-controlled United Russia ruling party increased its budget for “propaganda and public events” in 2022 by nearly 10 times, from 83 million rubles ($1.1 million) to 730 million rubles ($10 million). Other establishment political parties that support the war against Ukraine, including the Communist Party, A Just Russia, and New People, also increased their budgets for such activities, the daily Kommersant reported in August 2022 reported.
'The Little Tail Of The Elephant'
Another 2.2 million ruble grant handed out by the Kremlin in January went to Sergei Ivanov -- a United Russia lawmaker in the city council of Syzran, the third-largest city in the Samara region – to stage a miniature reconstruction of the World War II tank battle around Kursk in the summer of 1943.
The widely ridiculed event featured schoolchildren in Nazi German and Soviet uniforms pushing makeshift tanks around a local gym and prompted local activists to ask prosecutors to look into how the grant was spent.
Ivanov told RFE/RL that the idea of staging the battle came to him during a visit to a Russian-occupied part of eastern Ukraine in March 2022, where, he said, he saw “not a special operation, but a war.”
“Am I satisfied with how the reconstruction went?” he said. “How should I answer? On the whole, of course, I am satisfied. The children saw it. It was intended for schoolchildren.”
He added that the clips that appeared on social media only showed “the little tail of the elephant.”
A group in the central Russian city of Yaroslavl received a 9.9 million ruble ($135,000) presidential grant to make a series of four short films to tell viewers about “the Russian world.”
“The main theme is to illustrate positively our traditional cultural values and to humorously mock superficial Western ones, like tolerance,” said former Rostov Mayor Konstantin Shevkoplyas, who heads the League For Preserving Our Heritage, which received the grant.
United Russia in November 2022 launched a national martial arts program called Sambo (using the Latin Z) “aimed at developing the physical, moral-psychological qualities of people, as well as patriotism and civic-mindedness.” The program, headed by Russian Sambo Federation head Sergei Yeliseyev and senior United Russia official Andrei Turchak, has spread the Z symbol through schools across Russia and in occupied Ukraine in just a few months.
“Propaganda in militaristic societies works like this -- you have to cover everything around with swastikas or other symbols so that even people who don’t care about politics get the feeling that this is part of their lives,” journalist Shepelin said. “People get used to it and accept it as a part of life. The propaganda seeps into their subconscious. At least, I think that is what the presidential administration is thinking.
“In terms of the quantity of such symbols, we are still far from a totalitarian society,” he added. “But are we moving in that direction? Of course, we are.”
In Siberia’s Novosibirsk region, the governmental Center for Civic and Patriotic Education And Public Projects earlier this month announced a 1.44 million ruble ($20,00) tender to create patriotic videos to be shown in Novosibirsk business centers. The center also plans to produce patriotic posters to hang in elevators and other visible locations in residential buildings.
'Tired Of Spitting'
In January, the authorities in Yaroslavl gave a 10,000 ruble ($137) “one-time” premium to 83-year-old Lidia Chuliskiene, who was born in Leningrad during the wartime blockade of the city. Her father was killed early in the war and her mother was arrested in 1942. Chuliskiene spent three years in a prison camp as the daughter of an “enemy of the people” before being sent to be raised in a Yaroslavl orphanage.
Yaroslavl Mayor Artyom Molchanov bragged about the premium on social media, posting a photograph of Chuliskiene wearing a Soviet Army uniform emblazoned with a prominent Z symbol.
The same month, the mayor of the southern Siberian city of Bratsk, Sergei Serebrennikov, received a letter from a local woman, the mother of seven children, who asked for help buying a stroller.
“The head of the family works a lot, but can’t afford additional expenses,” Serebrennikov wrote in a Telegram post. His post included a video of the mayor delivering the stroller to the family and, additionally, handing out to all the children black ski caps emblazoned with the Z symbol.
Two newly constructed residential blocks in the Siberian city of Abakan, the capital of the Republic of Khakasia, have been festooned with the Latin letters Z and V. The buildings were constructed by a company owned by United Russia regional lawmaker Matvei Dreyev.
“I’m tired of spitting every time I drive by them,” said a local man who asked to be identified only as Maksim for fear of retribution for his views. “It is OK when they put some stickers on something -- you pick them off and forget about it. In fact, many have already been removed. But this, you could say, is somehow monumental.”
Just outside Abakan, along the main road to the major city of Krasnoyarsk, stands a massive heating plant owned by the company Khaktek with a 10-meter-high Z emblazoned on it, along with the slogans: “For Russia, For Putin, For Our People.”
“That is hilarious,” said Stanislav, who lives in the Abakan suburb of Chernogorsk and who asked that his surname be withheld for fear of repercussions. “The most crooked company -- and I’m using the mildest language I can think of -- is the first one to hang out the Z. I remember how Khaktek used to heat the city. There would be no water for days, no heat in the winter. In 2019, we were sitting around warming ourselves by the open oven. And things like that happened every winter.
“But painting a letter is a lot easier than working properly,” he added. “To me, this is the symbol of Russia today, unfortunately: a worn-out heating plant that looks like a crematorium with such slogans on it.”
