Russia, Georgia: Unilateral Recognition of Abkhazia's and South Ossetia's Independence

Global Voices Online
Tuesday, August 26, 2008

See Global Voices special coverage page on the South Ossetia crisis.

Russia has formally recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia today. Below are some of the initial reactions from LiveJournal's Cyrillic sector.

Russian LJ user sholademi (Samson Sholademi) writes (RUS):

[...] Now the most interesting part begins... P.S. The line has been crossed, sort of. Though, in the past two weeks, since the beginning of the war in Georgia, everything that Russia does, for the first time in several years, does not cause me to feel outraged and critical (despite my "love" for Putin & Co.). Quite the opposite: everything's been done correctly. Long live the isolation! Hm... And what do you think about the recognition of Abkhazia's and South Ossetia's independence?

A few comments:

lyks:

Isolation - that's a good point. Soon we'll be traveling withing clearly defined borders, right? Farewell, India, goodbye, America [...]?

***

schtv_girl:

I think that we can, at last, be proud of our country! Regardless of how controversial it all is, regardless of how much they are accusing us of double standards, we've become strong! Russia is coming back! Join the action! [...]

***

zenya_zenya:

..............Couldn't care less..........Absolutely........

***

kirill_praha:

I think that those who live in Russia and wants to travel around the world, they should consider moving. Or getting a dual citizenship, which is difficult.

***

sethnagh:

Great. Now a wide river of the money of the Russian tax-payers will flow to these new "brotherly republics," damn it, to the stinking [Caucasus natives].

Georgian-Ukrainian LJ user vaxo (Vakhtang Kipiani) writes (UKR):

[...] You're a fool, Medvedev. Not a single normal country will support Russia. Now we'll see what a direct confrontation with the world is like.

A few comments:

yangel:

Such a scenario was to be expected (

***

viebelle

I have an impression that for the past couple of weeks [they couldn't care less and were doing as they pleased]. As for [Medvedev], I don't think he played the lead part in this.

vaxo:

Right, but he was the one to sign this order. And legally, he is the one responsible for it.

[...]

yangel:

[...] At one point, Turkey unilaterally recognized the independence of Northern Cyprus - do you think that Turkey has spent all these years in international isolation?

***

deniko76:

With so much oil, Russia can afford self-isolation. But I don't really understand why they should prefer isolation and being surrounded by "a circle of hatred" to normal friendly relationship with the neighbors.

***

steel_archer:

Their oligarchs keep their money in Swiss banks, and their villas are in London. We'll see what kind of isolation it will be )))

***

a_kulik:

There won't be any confrontation with the world. If there hadn't been Kosovo, there would've been a confrontation. But after Kosovo, everything will be OK for Russia. America has exchanged South Ossetia for Kosovo.

***

ledilid:

And these people are not allowing others to recognize Kosovo... [...]

***

agrp_xtb:

Direct confrontation with whom? With small but proud Estonia? Do you still believe that there is "confrontation" between the United States and the Russian Federation? [...]

Georgian LJ user djdrive (Misha Tavkhelidze) writes (RUS):

Looks like Putinodvedev has gone totally nuts. What are they pulling their country into?

1. War
2. Economic abyss
3. Disintegration

Russian, all of you who can, flee this country, while the curtain is still up! It'll be impossible to get a visa later.

One of the comments:

dimanklg:

Oh please. We are used to that.

Georgian-Russian LJ user som writes (RUS):

"Russia, you've gone nuts" (c)

I remember our answer to the civil defense teacher's question: What should you do if you see the nuclear mushroom at the horizon? - Pull a white bed sheet over your head and crawl to the cemetery.

Looks like the idiots believe that it's possible to win WWIII.

During the Caribbean Crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev had enough of common sense to stop 20 minutes before the catastrophe. Will these ones have it, too? I don't really want to check.

Some of the comments:

psa_98:

Your lovely country (and especially two of its regions [Abkhazia and South Ossetia], whose population is smaller than Butovo [one of Moscow's districts]) aren't really worth a nuclear mushroom. I think that the Russian Federation is wrong in this conflict, but Saakashvili (and his curators from the State Department) have to be blamed equally - they've lost the game, too.

***

piligrim:

[...] Do you really think that Georgia is enough of a reason for the United States and NATO to start WWIII?

luarvique:

Well, Prince Ferdinand and Serbia were much of a reason, either...

a_gru:

And are you sure that only Americans and NATO states can start a war? Is there really no one but them out there?

***

pindle:

[...] I think Europe will thank us - quietly, of course. We've closed the situation, created a new, long-term and stable status quo, which is a lot more convenient for Europe than the previous one. [...]

LJ user physik_alfa writes (RUS) in the ru_politics LJ community:

Personally, I pity Abkhazia. They've been basically equaled with the thieves from South Ossetia. They could've been flourishing on tourism... Slowly, perhaps, but on their own and without blood. And now Kremlin [thugs] will seize everything for themselves there.

A few comments:

vyacha:

The Abkhaz aren't that naive when it comes to foreign investments. According to their laws, a foreign (including Russian) company cannot independently get involved in, say, construction there, can't even open a branch [...] office there. What's possible, though, are 50/50 investments with an Abkhaz [individual or company] [...]. I don't think anything will change much now. They know how to count their own money.

***

afx237_v7:

I was [in Abkhazia] a couple years ago and learned a lot of interesting things. Turns out many touristic objects [...] have already been bought (rented for 50 years, since the Abkhaz constitution does not allow to sell land to foreigners) by the Moscow guys.

LJ user dmitrivrubel has posted a graph illustrating what happened to the Russian stocks after Dmitry Medvedev made his Abkhazia and South Ossetia announcement at 3 PM Moscow time today:



LJ user onkel_hans commented (RUS):

In countries where economy rules, things like this lead to the fall of the government.

Russia: Savva Terentyev's Case

Global Voices Online
Tuesday, July 15, 2008

On July 7, Savva Terentyev, 22, a Russian blogger and musician from Syktyvkar, received a one-year suspended jail sentence for a comment (RUS) he posted on Feb. 15, 2007, on the blog of a local journalist Boris Suranov.

Here is a rough translation of the comment:

I hate cops [menty], [swear word omitted]

I don't agree with the thesis that "policemen still have the mentality of a repressive stick in the hands of the powers that be." First, they are cops [menty, not militsionery, a less respectful way to refer to police]. Second, their mentality isn't still here. It's simply ineradicable. Once a musor [a synonym for ment; non-slang meaning of the word is "trash"], always a musor, even in Africa. Those who become cops [menty] - rednecks and thugs - are the dumbest and least educated representatives of the live/animal world. Would be great if there was an oven, similar to those in Auschwitz, in the center of every Russian city, at the main square (in Syktyvkar, right in the center of Stefanovskaya, where the New Year's tree stands, so that everyone could see), and there'd be a daily ceremony - or, even better, twice a day (at noon and midnight, for example) - of burning a dishonest cop [ment] there. The people would be doing the burning. This would be the first step towards cleansing the society of the dirt that the thuggish cops are.

The court found Terentyev guilty of inciting enmity and publicly humiliating representatives of a social group (Article 282, part 1 of the Russian Federation's Criminal Code).

Here is a rough translation of a tiny part of the 12-page "guilty" verdict (RUS), posted by one of the defense witnesses, LJ user mezak, on his blog (the original of the passage below is on p. 11; the post also has photos of Terentyev, his defense team, and the judge reading the verdict; there are 376 comments to the post so far):

[...] Defendant Terentyev S.S. [Savva Sergeyevich], by means of the language, by having a negative impact on the public opinion and mood, and by aiming to incite social enmity and hatred, to escalate social conflict, to sharpen social contradictions, to awaken base instincts in people, contrasted the people and police officers, calling to [their] physical annihilation by the people. The text does not allow for ambiguous understanding and interpretation of [its] content and meaning, because it should be understandable to any average native speaker of Russian who has basic oral and written language skills. [...]

LJ user sholademi re-posted the verdict on his blog and added this note (RUS) at the end of his entry:

Hmm, it has to be noted that the court's verdict contains many orthographic mistakes. This, in addition to the legal side of the case (namely, the questionable linguistic analysis). In short, it's getting crazier and crazier.

In another post, LJ user sholademi posted a 5-question survey (RUS), explaining that Terentyev's defense team was planning to appeal the blogger's sentence and, among other things, would like to "find out how Savva Terentyev's case is going to affect the discussion environment in the Russian blogosphere." Below are the survey's results so far:

1. Before Savva Terentyev's case, were there many LJ bloggers who allowed themselves to speak harshly of law enforcement and other state institutions and officials?

a. Many bloggers made such statements - 842 (75.4%)

b. Only some bloggers made such statements - 233 (20.9%)

c. I've never encountered such statements on blogs - 41 (3.7%)

2. Before the verdict on Savva Terentyev's case, how often did you encounter harsh statements about law enforcement and other state institutions and officials on your friends feed?

а. Such statements were pretty frequent on my friends feed - 664 (59.7%)

b. Such statements were pretty rare on my friends feed - 347 (31.2%)

c. Such statements were never present on my friends feed - 102 (9.2%)

3. If the verdict on Savva Terentyev's case comes into force, how will it affect the number of bloggers who would allow themselves to make harsh statements about law enforcement and other state institutions and officials in open posts and comments?

a. Their numbers will grow significantly - 193 (17.4%)

b. Their numbers will grow, but not significantly - 239 (21.6%)

c. Their numbers will decrease, but not significantly - 550 (49.6%)

d. Their numbers will decrease significantly - 126 (11.4%)

4. If the verdict on Savva Terentyev's case comes into force, how will it affect the number of bloggers who would allow themselves to make harsh statements about law enforcement and other state institutions and officials in locked (friends-only) posts?

a. Their numbers will grow significantly - 386 (34.9%)

b. Their numbers will grow, but not significantly - 470 (42.5%)

c. Their numbers will decrease, but not significantly - 219 (19.8%)

d. Their numbers will decrease significantly - 31 (2.8%)

5. Do you consider Savva Terentyev's sentence fair?

a. I consider it fair - 73 (6.5%)

b. I consider it unfair, as it is too soft - 12 (1.1%)

c. I consider it unfair, as it is too harsh - 71 (6.3%)

d. I consider it unfair in principle, because, in my opinion, Savva did not commit a crime - 963 (86.1%)

On July 14, Savva Terentyev and his lawyer held a press conference in Moscow (see photo of Terentyev at LJ user mezak's blog). LJ user dolboeb - Anton Nossik, the self-described "Social Media Evangelist at SUP," the online media company that owns LiveJournal.com - announced the event on his blog and added this note (RUS) at the end of his post:

[...] Each month, 10-12 million comments appear in the Cyrillic LJ (10.5 million in June, 130.5 million in the past 12 months). On the average, every post gets 3.7 comments. [The police unit that initiated Savva Terentyev's case] has plenty of work ahead (unless, of course, they've got nothing else to busy themselves with).

At the press conference, LJ user dolboeb reiterated his point (RUS, link to an article in Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper for which Anna Politkovskaya used to write):

[...] Of course, spending 15 minutes on the web and finding a criminal is a lot more convenient than running around the dark, narrow streets with a gun. As a taxpayer, I'm not satisfied with this situation. [...]

Russia: "Putin's Plan"

Global Voices Online
Sunday, September 16, 2007

A few days ago, LJ user drugoi photographed a political ad on Leninsky Prospekt in Moscow and posted the picture on his blog (RUS).

The ad read: "Putin's Plan - Russia's Victory!"

Although it did not carry any logo of the pro-Putin United Russia party, it was, most likely, their product: on the United Russia's official site, for example, there is a whole section on "Putin's Plan" (RUS) and the things that are supposedly being done to carry it out.

LJ user drugoi asked this obvious question: "What's the plan, does anyone know?"

And received 150 comments from his readers.

Below is the translation of some of them:

cholerabw:

They are all over Moscow!!! Saw the same one on the way to the office.

mannaz_russia:

All over Russia. Kaliningrad.

oupire:

This information is absolutely secret.

feiushka:

Victory in Sochi? :)

phoneme:

Please tell me it's a joke. Brezhnev is back. The undefeatable Terminator.

galinacu:

The plan is for Russia to defeat EVERYONE. At least, this is how I understand it. "The party's plans are the plans of the people!"

mrguffi:

>"The party's plans are the plans of the people!"

Aha, to carry out the people's will without asking these very people's opinion.

bakeeva:

Suyevernaya [superstitious] democracy. I mean, suvenirnaya [souvenir democracy]. Oh, wrong again... Here: suverennaya [sovereign democracy, referring to the Kremlin-coined term] )

shaball:

All of Krasnodar region is full of such [campaign ads]. Putin's Plan/Tkachyov's Plan, with explanations: repair of all roads, a road leading up to every village, gasification, etc... =)

barouh:

The guys are being modest. I'm surprised not by the ad itself, but by the fact that Moscow's got a lighter version. In the regions, the slogan is: "PUTIN'S PLAN - UNITED RUSSIA." Looks like they are too shy to kick off such a premature campaign, and so they've temporarily replaced the word "united" with the word "victory."

rustex:

In our city, these ads have been around for a month or so. And those who place the ads sometimes lapse in the really cute way. On double billboards, on which two ads are next to each other, one could read:

- Sweet Dreams - Putin's Plan - United Russia (next to an ad of the local sweets factory)
- The Monster of Communication - United Russia ([Beeline, a mobile operator], of course) [...]

gibor:

Oh, oh... You may laugh, but it's hard to believe that we're seeing it again (if you look at it from afar). [...]

seba_pereira:

[...] I haven't seen it, but I've read Orwell )

Additionally, a number of readers pointed out that in Russian slang, the word "plan" happens to be one of the names for marijuana:

shade33:

Excellent plan, apparently.

gabbovsky:

Where is he getting it?

***

The comic dimension of pre-election politics in Russia - where the legislative vote is coming up on Dec. 2 and the presidential election is to take place on March 9, 2008 - was highlighted again by the Russian bloggers following the surprise nomination of little-known Victor Zubkov for the premier's post last Wednesday.

Here's what happened, according to LJ user sholademi, whose post (RUS) made it into the top 30 of the Yandex Blogs portal on Sept. 14:

[...]

On the main page of [Lenta.ru, one of the most popular Russian online news outlets], an item appeared the night of Sept. 12-13, in which it was written that, as a replacement for the resigned prime minister Mikhail Fradkov, the Russian president Vladimir Putin nominated Victor Pipiskin for the premier's post, a candidacy to be confirmed by the State Duma.

[A screenshot of the story, with the name "Victor Pipiskin" circled in red at the very bottom of the piece. The name Pipiskin derives from a word designating "penis" in Russian baby talk.]

As it turned out, the scandalous insertion with the last name Pipiskin was an accidental prank by one of Lenta.ru's employees. He noticed that Fradkov had resigned, and some Victor had been appointed as the new [premier], but then he forgot the last name. And so he wrote in his rough draft - "Victor Pipiskin has been appointed to replace Fradkov" - and then he published it this way on the site.

This sensational piece of news spent the whole night on Lenta.ru (and it also got into the info links of Rambler.ru (screenshot) and someplace else as well).

Today, the guilty editor has been fired from Lenta.ru.

And the Russian government headed by the nearly confirmed prime minister Victor Zubkov is said to be planning to file a 1-million-ruble lawsuit against Lenta.ru.

Though this last item may turn out to be nothing but a rumor.

[...]

Victor Pipiskin has a make-believe blog now: http://viktor-pipiskin.livejournal.com/.

He has grown so popular that for a while he even seemed to have a Russian-language Wikipedia entry of his own: a screenshot is here.

And some bloggers (RUS) would like to see him as Russia's next president.

LJ user drugoi asked (RUS) on Sept. 15:

Pipiskin, is he a [meme] already or not yet?

And one reader - LJ user so_matika - replied (RUS):

It's not just a meme. It's the beginning of a subculture.

Russia: Dissenters' March in Moscow (2)

Global Voices Online
Wednesday, April 18, 2007

On the one hand, president Vladimir Putin's spokesman admitted Tuesday that there had been instances of "overreaction" by riot police during the opposition's weekend rallies.

But on the other hand, also on Tuesday, opposition leader and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov was summoned for questioning to the Federal Security Service (FSB), on suspicion that he had been propagating extremism.

There is a lot of media coverage of these two and other post-rally developments (here's what comes up when you google "kasparov kasyanov limonov" - this AP piece, for example) - but below is a bit more of what Russian bloggers have written about the Dissenters' March in Moscow itself, as well as links to their photos.

(Warning: as in the previous installment, some links here lead to blogs with bandwidth-intensive content.)

- LJ user drugoi (photos and video);

- LJ user jetturtle (photos);

- LJ user zhenshen (photos);

- LJ user sholademi (photos featuring riot police in the context of the city and its various ads and signs):

On April 14, OMON fighters in Moscow took part in the casting for commercials of world-famous brands.

- LJ user khit (text):

April 12, 2007 -

I'm a dissenter, too [I disagree, too], but I'm not going to the March. Because what I disagree with isn't what the Communists, nationalists, and Limonov people [limonovtsy, members of Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party] disagree with. And don't try to explain to me that Communists and limonovtsy are absolutely not what they used to be, and that the nationalists who are going to be there are all good - derivative from the word "nationa" and not "ethnicity." This [mixed up mass] smells of unscrupulousness. Not political unscrupulousness (you can't surprise anyone with that now), but human unscrupulousness. Disgusting.

April 15, 2007 -

Yes! Yes! Yes! I went there, even though only a day before, I was explaining in detail why I wouldn't go. But I wasn't lying. [...] I don't regret having gone there. It was something to be seen with my own eyes. In order to once again realize that this regime is mean. And also to understand that, alas, we are not ready for resistance. Alas!

- LJ user orthannaer (photo, text - here, here, here, and here):

[...] An OMON sergeant. A normal guy. Some female journalist was trying to get him talk on the subject of whether he "enjoyed defending the regime" - so I also spent some time talking to him. I'll skip the conversation's beginning, here's from the middle:

He asks me: "Have you come here to cause something bad to happen?"

- No, I wouldn't want anything bad to happen. But if the fighting occured here, it would be my duty to tell how it all went, who started it first.
- Ah, come on, as always, you'll write that it was OMON that beat the crap out of everyone.
- If you start it, I'll write this. But if the NBP people set upon you, I'll write that they are the idiots.
- Oh yeah?

Then [an officer of superior rank] approached and we pretended that we were just standing next to each other. Then the guy said that they couldn't be photographed, and couldn't talk to journalists, and couldn't do anything at all - because they wouldn't get their bonus money if they did. I [ignored] this ban on photographs and took a picture, shooting upward, from the hip, and the guy didn't see it.

Anyway, what am I trying to say? If you approach them with hatred, you'll get hatred in return. Folks come out of the subway and look at the cops as they would look at animals, or mud beneath their feet (and I've seen many people like this today), and then they are for some reason surprised that they're being grabbed by their hands and taken to jail [obezyannik, "monkey cage"]. Cops are people, too. And they differ from one another. Just like anywhere else, some are bastards, and some are normal guys. [...]

- LJ user bee-n-noa (photos, text):

[...] When we started photographing the police, an OMON fighter came up to us and asked if we had any posters with us. When we asked him what he'd do to us if we did have posters, he said mysteriously: "Well, it depends on what the posters say." And after another question - "And what if it said, 'Putin, give us back the election'?" - he lost patience and said that he wasn't allowed to talk with us. [...]

- LJ user krocodl (text):

[...]

* There are many young people in the audience. I spoke with a friend a while ago, and he complained that he didn't like today's kids too much, because they seemed somewhat zombified to him. But there [at the March], there were many good faces, with thoughts and feelings in their eyes. This, of course, is a plus, but the minus is that OMON is aiming exactly at these very people. I heard it myself - when the Marsians [OMON fighters] were jumping out of the bus, their commander was yelling, "Grab the young ones first." With such an approach, they'll become even more interesting and more adult in a while, of course, but I'm afraid it'll get pretty hard to explain to them about law and non-violent resistance. [...]

* The second-largest group is, of course, people aged 50 and more. Something worth noting is that there are a lot more "middle-class" representatives now [...]. Pensioners and the very elderly people are the second most intense group, too, whose drive can only be compared to that of the National Bolshevik Party guys. An idiotic country, where only the youngest and the oldest can afford being active - because both don't really have anything to lose. [...]

Russia: The Second Blog War

Global Voices Online
Saturday, October 21, 2006


(more buttons and userpics are here)

The Russian-language blogosphere (commonly known as ZheZhe) is on fire: some users are shutting down their blogs, others are emigrating to the virtual Trinidad & Tobago - all because LiveJournal.com's owner Six Apart has decided to team up with the Russian internet company Sup, founded this year by Aleksandr Mamut, a Russian "oligarch," and Andrew Paulson, an American entrepreneur.

This isn't the first time that ZheZhe (an abbreviation of ZhivoyZhurnal - "LiveJournal" in Russian) is in rebellion: the first "blog war" has been documented by Anna Arutunyan in the July 2005 issue of the Exile.

Assurances from managers of Six Apart and Sup have left many unconvinced and still concerned over whether the Russian security services would gain access to their personal information and whether the new Abuse Team would carry out ruthless purges. A number of ethnic Russian bloggers are furious over the fact that some of Sup's top managers are Jewish; their favorite object of hate now seems to be Anton Nossik (LJ user dolboeb), whose opinion on journalist Anna Politkovskaya's assassination was translated for Global Voices earlier this month.

LJ user kimmi8, a Six Apart employee, attempts to clarify the situation (and LJ user yakovis translates her entry, posted in the lj_biz community, into Russian):

We've licensed SUP, a Russian internet company, the right to use the LiveJournal brand. They'll be operating portions of the LiveJournal service for our Russian userbase (and only for those that want this support). This partnership is an effort to improve the speed, usability, and services that are offered to our Russian community. The only changes that Russian users will see is an improvement to user experience, translation, and support.

The Russian users that have agreed to this support will still continue to be a part of LiveJournal, for as long as they want to be. SUP will be able to promote other products or services they develop to the Russian community, but they won't be able to disconnect anyone from LiveJournal or break apart the community. LiveJournal will still be in control of your journals. We're partnering with SUP to offer a better experience, since we know we've been strongly limited by not being able to serve our Russian community in their native language.

Here are a few of the common questions we know you have:

* What criteria will be used to determine whether a journal is "Russian" or not?

It will be a combination of if you write primarily in Cyrillic, have listed your location as a country from the former USSR, or use a Russian browser.

* Will there be a way to opt out of having my journal transfered?

No journals are being transferred; it's just a change in how the site will be supported. You will be able to opt out of getting the new Russian features, and to continue to be supported by LiveJournal/Six Apart).

* Will information from these journals be given to the Russian government? Personal information?

No. Not in any way that would not happen today, such as a court-ordered subpoena. SUP is acting as our agent and will be bound by our Privacy Policy.

[...]

According to the results of an LJ opinion poll, over 50 percent of respondents (1,741 votes so far) are against Sup's takeover; roughly 20 percent are still undecided and as many don't care; and only 8.5 percent consider the changes positive.

LJ user sholademi, whose post on children's drawings of Vladimir Putin was featured on Global Voices in August, thinks that ZheZhe won't last till winter.

This must be a bit of an exaggeration - even though some of the 300,000-plus Russian users' accounts will surely land in Trinidad & Tobago's blogosphere, as a result of the ongoing virtual exodus flash mob: "Let's make this small but proud state the leader of the world Internet!"



Another resistance initiative has been suggested by a Ukrainian-language blogger none_smilodon, who decided to write his entries using Greek script instead of the Cyrillic:



***

There are currently three LJ communities (RUS) whose members oppose Sup: anti_prodazha ("anti-sale: We are for freedom in the LJ"), antisup, and no_sup.

***

One LJ community, sup_ru, is maintained by dolboeb and contains suggestions to Sup's management (RUS) on how to improve ZheZhe, among other things.

***

LJ user yojik_yamamoto chronicles (RUS) what he calls "the hysteria."

Russia: Portraits of Putin

Global Voices Online
Friday, August 11, 2006

Samson Sholademi - LJ user sholademi, journalist of a Russian tabloid Express Gazeta - displays a unique drawing collection on his blog: portraits of Russia's president Vladimir Putin, made by children (mainly).

There is Putin "relaxing at home, reading a book to his doggie Kony" (by Vika Lvova, 9), and there is Putin with Kony on a desert island (by Boris G., 11), and there is Putin "always brushing his teeth in the morning, and there's a toilet made of gold in his bathroom" (by Nastya Karpova, 9).

There is Putin driving around with George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice (by Dasha N., 12), and there is Putin next to the Kremlin Wall, with the Russian flag up and the U.S. flag down: "Russia - forever, America - pfooooo!" (by D. Petrenko, 11), and there is Putin's fist directed at a head with Hitler's mustache and a U.S. flag above it, with the words: "George is a very bad cowboy! V. V. Putin will protect us!" (by Roman Belov, 6-grader).

There is a Boris-Berezovsky-look-alike Putin, standing next to a boxing ring, wearing a suit instead of a kimono: the author - Alisa Lukshina, 7, daughter of LJ user agatangel, Kyiv, Ukraine - isn't sure what "kimono" is.

There is a fish with Putin's initials - VVP - sitting on a gas pipe (by an anonymous young man).

There is Putin with a Russian tricolor halo around his head (by LJ user zhivaya_voda).

There is much more.

For Sholademi, it began as a Russia Day assignment in early June (RUS):

I was given an interesting assignment at work today: to ask ordinary kindergarten and school kids (grades 1-6) to draw our president - Vladimir Vladimirovich. The way they imagine him when they hear the word "Putin."

I've already found a group of school and kindergarten kids for this "experiment." But to be honest, I don't want to limit myself to these two age groups only: from 3 to 6 and from 7 to 12 years old. And geographically, to Moscow alone.

It'd be interesting to see how Putin would be drawn by older people and those from other cities or even other countries.

That's why I want you, my friends and readers of my LJ, to take part in this competition of amateur drawings called "Kids Drawing Putin."

[...]

The following themes are welcome in your work:

1. Putin with his black labrador Kony.

2. Putin on a fighter jet.

3. Putin on a submarine.

4. Putin greets the launching of the rocket complex "Bulava."

5. Putin with the Patriarch Alexiy II.

6. Putin with wife and children.

7. Putin with Bush or any other foreign leader.

8. Putin as an intelligence officer.

9. Putin wearing a kimono robe.

10. Putin skiing.

11. Putin with Yeltsin.

12. Putin as a retired man.

Below is the translation (RUS) of what Sholademi wrote for his newspaper after the drawing session:

[...]

Some schoolkids, especially first- and second-graders - had a very vague idea of how Vladimir Vladimirovich looked in real life.

- How should we draw him, with the hair or hairless? - asked 9-year-old Misha.

Opinions differed. Some children thought that Putin does have something growing on his head: on the sides, at least. Others thought that the Russian president is bold.

A teacher wanted to clarify at some point, but I caught her just in time with a cautioning gesture. Let each child draw Putin's portrait independently, the way he imagines him, not relying on the adults' advice.

This is why girls drew VVP with hair - and sometimes even with a bit too much of it, while boys made Putin look older by leaving a few thin curles on his head.

Another issue of contention was the color of the president's eyes: blue or brown? The girls made his eyes the color of the sky; the boys worked hard on painting them black or brown.

[...]

The newspaper's competition of kids' drawings closes on October 7, Putin's birthday, with an exhibition at the State Duma. Winners will receive prizes; their work will be sent to Putin as birthday gifts.

Not surprisingly, prizes will be Putin-themed (RUS):

First place: A black labrador puppy - same as Putin's favorite dog Kony. To the winner's parents - a keg of German beer.

Second place: A Japanese kimono robe with black belt. To parents - also, a keg of German beer.

Third place: A German language audio course for beginners. And a keg of German beer for the parents.