Andrey Malgin: "Ribbons"

“Putin with the St. George’s ribbon. And his whole camarilla too. I expected this. Now this will be the main distinctive sign of the Putinites. It has a deep meaning. Like we are the winners, and those with whites are losers. And this is logical: white is really the color of surrender. The Germans in Berlin in 1945 crawled out of their holes, holding white flags in their hands. Some time ago, I read on Facebook quite reasonable arguments by Alexander Timofeevsky that the opposition made a mistake by choosing white. With a confident hand, take away this symbolism that is understandable to the people. It would be great. These days the police would try to detain people for St. George’s ribbons. But now what will happen? Victory" and others. They will contrast: like, here we are, patriots, and these are white-ribbon enemies, controlled from overseas. And since part of our population, five years ago, acquired a strange habit every spring of tying St. George ribbons to everything they could, then the number of these “patriotic” (in quotes) signs will clearly exceed white ribbon symbols. There is no need to carry out any pathing. And these white ribbons will look very inappropriate in the eyes of a large part of the population, and NTV Surkov’s propaganda will not miss out on this. Especially if they manage to provoke some kind of fight between the St. George and white ribbon bearers (I think it won’t be difficult for them to organize this). Exactly a year ago, in May, we were traveling from Domodedovo by taxi and were driven by a Kyrgyz man, all hung with St. George’s ribbons. So that, he says, the traffic cops don’t torture me. Not only that, the presence of a white or St. George ribbon will now be a sign for the cops: who to torture, who not to torture. Likewise, in the eyes of the average person, the white ribbon will seem like a challenge not so much to the current junta, but also to Soviet history, which he, the average person, is not ready to abandon and which Putin and his accomplices willingly appropriated for their own purposes.