Russian troopers have begun elevating Soviet-era flags in lately occupied areas of Ukraine. On April 19 within the southern metropolis of Kherson, troops from a Rosgvardia police unit hoisted the crimson "banner of victory" up the primary flagpole within the metropolis's "Alley of Glory," a park devoted to the reminiscence of locals who fought within the Pink Military in the course of the Second World Conflict.

Within the runup to Vladimir Putin's February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russian home media steadily made gentle of Western claims that the Russian president was searching for to reestablish the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, when the "banner of victory" was raised in Kherson, Kremlin-controlled tv channels have been fast to reward the event.

Throughout its midday information broadcast on April 20, Russia's First Channel featured a laudatory phase that started: "Could ninth is quick approaching, and the crimson flag underneath which fascism was crushed within the twentieth century once more flutters above Kherson's Alley of Glory. It's a image of the nice feat of the Soviet folks, one which native residents once more recall with a particular feeling."

First Channel had despatched a correspondent to the flag-raising ceremony, and a group of interviews with just a few of these aforementioned native residents adopted.

Russian Soviet victory banner
Folks carry crimson flags and banners as they participate within the Immortal Regiment march in the course of the Victory Day navy parade in Moscow on Could 9, 2015. Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over an enormous Victory Day parade celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet win over Nazi Germany, amid a Western boycott of the festivities over the Ukraine disaster. AFP through Getty Photographs

"I would like my grandson to study the Russian language and Russian historical past, and for him to know in regards to the victory," a girl stated, along with her again to the digicam.

An older man, who additionally spoke together with his again to the digicam, stated that the flag meant "liberation from all the things that has been occurring on this territory for the previous thirty years," an obvious reference to Ukraine's 1991 declaration of independence from Soviet rule.

A youthful man, who spoke on digicam, commented that the victory banner "shouldn't be trampled on."

The ceremony in Kherson was not the one instance of Russian troopers in Ukraine utilizing Soviet iconography, neither is it the one instance of Kremlin-controlled media praising them for it.

On April 18, First Channel speak present host Artyom Sheinin opened his broadcast with an homage to the "crimson banner with yellow hammer and sickle and star underneath which so many people served, and which was unfurled over the Reichstag." That occasion occurred when Russian forces entered Berlin on Could 1, 1945, the day after Adolph Hitler dedicated suicide in his bunker.

Sheinin then confirmed pictures of a Russian soldier climbing a manufacturing facility smokestack with a view to change its blue-on-yellow Ukrainian flag with the crimson Soviet banner he had simply described. The Russian federal channel host thought-about this to be an acceptable symbolic gesture, as "the territory has been liberated from the heirs of those self same fascists over whose capital that crimson flag was as soon as unfurled."

In November of 2021, the unbiased polling middle Levada revealed survey outcomes indicating that 66% of Russians "regretted the breakup of the Soviet Union," with solely 25% answering that they didn't.

An analogous ballot carried out in 2020 by the Kyiv Worldwide Institute of Sociology discovered that solely 33% of Ukrainians "regretted the breakup of the Soviet Union," with 50% answering that the dissolution of the empire had been a optimistic factor.