{"id":348061,"date":"2025-08-16T02:26:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T02:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/348061\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T02:26:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T02:26:19","slug":"ussr-sweatshirt-and-chicken-kyiv-russia-dials-up-trolling-before-alaska-summit-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/348061\/","title":{"rendered":"USSR sweatshirt and chicken kyiv: Russia dials up trolling before Alaska summit | Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a not-so-subtle act of trolling, Russia\u2019s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, arrived in Alaska<\/a> on the eve of the US\u2013Russia summit wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with \u201cCCCP\u201d, the Russian initials for the USSR.<\/p>\n

Once seen in western capitals as a pragmatic and skilled diplomat, the 75-year-old has in recent years mirrored the Kremlin\u2019s radicalised politics, adopting an increasingly combative tone and resorting to trolling and mockery.<\/p>\n

Lavrov\u2019s choice of attire nods to the Kremlin\u2019s long-running narrative: Putin has repeatedly claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are \u201cone people\u201d, denying Ukraine\u2019s legitimacy and territorial integrity while promoting a broader notion of unity with Russia.<\/p>\n

Most of Russia\u2019s veteran delegation to Alaska<\/a>, including Lavrov, began their careers in the Soviet Union and have been accused by the Russian opposition of clinging to a Soviet imperialist mentality.<\/p>\n

Under Russia\u2019s occupation of Ukrainian territory, pro-Moscow authorities have dismantled monuments commemorating Ukrainian suffering under Soviet rule, including memorials to victims of Holodomor, the mass famine in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians.<\/p>\n

The former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis quipped on X about Lavrov\u2019s clothing choice: \u201c\u2018Just give us half of Ukraine and we promise we will stop,\u2019 says negotiator wearing USSR sweatshirt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russian fashion bloggers on Telegram were quick to identify the $120 sweatshirt as the work of Selsovet, a Chelyabinsk-based brand that specialises in \u201cSoviet heritage\u201d clothing.<\/p>\n

Lavrov\u2019s antics were the latest in a string of Russian provocations leading up to the summit, aimed at unsettling Ukraine and its European allies. Earlier, the editor-in-chief of RT, Margarita Simonyan, wrote that the Russian press corps flying to Alaska had been served chicken kyiv cutlets.<\/p>\n

The menu choice was quickly seized upon by other Russian propagandists.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin and Trump should turn Zelenskyy into a chicken kyiv. There\u2019s no shortage of humour in the Kremlin,\u201d wrote the pro-Kremlin commentator Sergei Markov.<\/p>\n

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Russia\u2019s state press, however, were in a less celebratory mood on arrival at their modest sleeping quarters in Anchorage, Alaska\u2019s largest city, where the summit will take place.<\/p>\n

With hotel space taken up by the influx of international media, Russian reporters were put up in the local ice hockey team\u2019s stadium, which had been converted into a Covid hospital during the pandemic and fitted with army beds donated by the Red Cross.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are living in Spartan conditions,\u201d one reporter is heard<\/a> complaining in a clip posted on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a not-so-subtle act of trolling, Russia\u2019s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, arrived in Alaska on the eve of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-348061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115036080240366205","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}