In Zaporizhzhia a monument dedicated to a notorious “fake” of Russian media was unveiled on the Heroes of the Revolution square, August 24. The sculpture depicts a creature with troll ears and a face resembling Vladimir Putin holding a dead bullfinch and refers to the story spread by Russian media in December that schoolchildren in Zaporizhzhia were being taught to destroy bullfinches because their coloring resembles the Russian flag.
The monument’s sculptor Maksym Drozdenko says it took him almost a month to complete the project.
“This is a monument to the internet meme about Russian bullfinches tortured by the ‘Jewish Banderites.’ This is the only internet meme that originated in Zaporizhzhia. It was born here when Russian TV reported that a teacher in the #106 school in Zaporizhzhia supposedly said to feed the tit birds because they are yellow and blue and to kill the bullfinches because they are the color of the Russian flag,” he explained. “The monument has two parts. The first is the Russian-speaking bullfinch murdered by the ‘Jewish Banderites’ and the ‘Russian World’ (in form of Putin) grieving for him. It was made out of clay from Sloviansk, which also has certain symbolic value,” he added. (Sloviansk was one of the first cities in the Donbas to be seized by Russian operatives in April 2014. It was liberated by Ukrainian forces on July 5, 2014 — Ed.).
Plans call for the monument to be moved to a reserve on the Khortytsia island on the Dnipro river. However, Drozdenko says he hopes to reach an agreement with local authorities to leave the monument on the square.
As reported previously, Russian media provided extensive coverage in December of the “perverted patriotism” in Ukraine where school children were being taught to kill the red-chested bullfinches because their coloring supposedly represents the imperial red colors of the USSR and its successor Russia.
However, posters in Ukrainian social media joked that the Russian propagandists had not done their homework since the real colors of the bullfinch are black and red — symbols, for example, of the Right Sector.
