“Babushka Z”
The viral story of a resistance fighter
Now before you get your hackles all up and start screaming about Putin, here is a story about a brave little Ukrainian babushka who bravely stood her ground in the face of enemy troops.
Babushka and Dedushka (Grandma and Grandpa) “Z” were outside when some troops approached them and began questioning them. Thinking that they were troops from the Russian Federation, the little babushka, who can’t be more than 3 feet tall and looks to be well into her 80’s, came marching out into the yard, carrying a Soviet flag.
She looks pleased to greet the soldiers holding the camera.
The soldiers are Ukrainian militia. But the little old woman, who lives in one of the resistance cities in eastern Ukraine, mistakenly assumes that they are Russian troops, who have come to drive the neo-Nazi militias away. No doubt she had seen them flying the Soviet flag, a symbol of Russian and Ukrainian unification, which some Russian soldiers have taken to flying from their vehicles.
The Ukrainian soldier mocks her a little menacingly, pretending to be “Russian” as he hands her some basic provisions. Then he stomps all over her flag. He says, “Slava Ukraine.” The word, slava means “praise” or “glory to” and used to appear in communist posters praising the workers. But these days, slava has taken on a different meaning. It has become a slogan of Ukrainian nationalists who use it in the manner of the Wehrmacht in WW2.
The little old woman appears visibly shaken when she realizes who she is really dealing with, but she braces herself, then refuses the provisions. “I don’t want them,” she says. Then, pointing at the soldier’s foot she says, “My parents died for this flag and you’re stepping on it.”
You can watch the harrowing encounter for yourself here:
To his credit, the Ukrainian soldier didn’t harm the elderly woman. At least not in the video. But her antique Soviet flag was confiscated. She had held onto it in memory of the time when Russians and Ukrainians were one people. A time before the nationalists rose up and embraced as heroes people like the anti-Semite Stepan Bandera and began calling them heroes. Heil, Ukraine.
We don’t know much more about “Babushka Z,” beyond what we can see in the video, but her story has gone viral in Russia and in eastern Ukraine where, for eight long years, militias wearing fascist symbols and employing weapons manufactured in the US, have been shelling the region known as Donbass. Their campaign against the Russian-speaking Ukrainians, who make up 80% of the people in that part of Ukraine, has been relentless and brutal. Many in the west still deny that there are Nazis in Ukraine, but they are well-known to the people in Babushka Z’s neighborhood.
In response to the video, Russian servicemen have started wearing “Babushka Z” patches on their uniforms and paintings of her have been cropping up on buildings and in internet memes. Her shadow is made to resemble the world-famous statue in Volgograd, “The Motherland Calls.” The statue, dedicated to the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, was the largest in the world when it was unveiled in 1967, and was a symbol of Soviet resistance to the fascists. A resistance Babushka Z’s parents died in.
In the meme below, we see Babushka Z facing down an army of women wearing wreaths of flowers on their heads and carrying wicked-looking sickles. What is this, you ask? Well, I’ll show you, but it isn’t pretty.
Warning: Graphic images and violence
The above video features a Ukrainian actress vowing to all Russians in Ukraine that there will be a “harvest of blood.” And while she is making her grisly pledge, she slashes the throat of a Russian POW. He is probably an actor, but even so, the video is horrifying and indicative of the fascist mindset, in which Eastern Slavs (Russians) are considered an inferior race, not deserving of life. At the end of the video, a masked Russian serviceman makes a cleverly worded, if rather patriarchal, response to the “Harvest of Blood” lady:
“Recently, a video was recorded where an actress from Lviv said that ‘All Russians are pigs, and death awaits them!’ So, Andriana Kurleck-Mityuk, we are addressing you personally! We don’t care how much money you were paid for participating in this video, no matter what fame you were waiting for! What you said is not a woman’s business! We strongly advise you to apologize on social media and stay at home! And now we turn to the men of Ukraine! Aren’t you ashamed that your women speak for you? Don’t be ashamed to post a video where a happy girl defends you by faking a murder! On the rights of European values, you are ready to throw out girls and mothers like cannon fodder on the battlefield. To be able to hide behind an actress and flee with his family to Europe! From this video it becomes not scary, but funny! Because everything shows that there are no men left among you.”*
That serviceman might be laughing, but many Russians are not, especially in view of the neo-Nazi “harvest of blood” that’s already been going on in the Donbass for almost a decade. An estimated 14,000 people are dead and western media has mostly ignored this, at best referring to the people in eastern Ukraine as “Russian-backed separatists” and painting them disingenuously as interlopers or occupiers supplied with Russian weapons.
But the families in eastern Ukraine, most of whom speak Russian and not Ukrainian, have been living in the Donbass region since long before Ukraine became an independent state, and long before even the Soviet Union existed. And as the government in Kiev became increasingly hostile to these people, banning the Russian language and forcing them to speak Ukrainian, neo-Nazi brigades like Azov and Pravyj Sektor (Right Sector) aggressively stepped up their persecution of the untermenschen: Russian Slavs, Roma people and LGBTQ, among others. In school, kids from Russian-speaking homes were bullied and shamed, told that they were “occupiers” and “Moskol.”
You don’t have to rely on Russian sources to confirm this. Such publications as Time Magazine and Vice have done stories about the alt-right problem in Ukraine. Unfortunately though, these are not “rogue” militias as Vice reported. They are recognized as official Ukrainian military and have been trained by NATO instructors. The symbols that they wear on their uniforms are in the Anti-Defamation League’s list of Nazi hate symbols. Yet social media such as Facebook has made allowances for these symbols to be displayed freely, as long as they are “Ukrainian.”
As the neo-Nazi brigades intensified their attacks on the Donbass, the majority of people living there voted to become part of Russia, like Crimea, but Ukraine did not allow that to happen. So they revolted and declared themselves the independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
“Babushka Z” lived through all of this, so when she saw what she thought were Russian troops coming, she was elated, thinking they had come to liberate her neighborhood. Unfortunately, her joy was short lived. Though the Ukrainian soldiers did not harm her during the video aside from stomping on her flag and confiscating it from her, many are worried about what might have happened after the video was taken. Is she safe? Is her husband safe?
There is not much information out there as of this posting, but I am keeping my eyes and ears open for sightings of “Babushka Z.” News of Babushka Z has reportedly reached the Kremlin and it is rumored that visas have been extended to her and Dedushka Z. I have not been able to confirm this, though. There is only this rather obscure post from a page on VK called “News of the President of Russia.”
After all that poor old couple has lived through, I personally hope she has been evacuated to safer territory and that she is free from harm away from the warfront in Donbass.
I will update this post when more is known.
- Many thanks to Viktoria Voronkova for translating the Russian soldier’s statement.
UPDATE May 2, 2022: According to Russian media, Babushka Z and her husband were rescued by DNR troops and are safe. They will make an appearance in Russia’s annual May 9 Victory Day parade.
UPDATE: Still no news confirming the location of Babushka and Dedushka Z. However, this mural has appeared in Shebekino, Belgorod Oblast, Russia.
