Welcome to the #StandwithRussia Movement
Image edited by Kevin Rothrock.
Following the Turkish Air Force's attack on a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 jet yesterday near the Syrian-Turkish border, protesters assembled outside Turkey's embassy in Moscow, throwing rocks and eggs, and even breaking a window. Russians are expressing their anger online, as well, launching a wave of one-star reviews on Google Maps of Turkey's Moscow embassy.
“They support terrorism,” says one recent review. “Your role in world history has always been that of a prostitute!” another angry reviewer writes. “Did you vermin forget who won in eight Russo-Turkish wars?” asks a woman named Natalia Vasilyevna.
Screenshot: Google Maps reviews of Turkey's embassy in Moscow.
Despite today's wave of negative reviews, Google Maps still displays a 4.5 overall score for the embassy, with a total of 44 listed reviews.
The government-run Russian news network RT published a story on November 25 claiming that Internet users around the world have begun sharing the hashtag #StandwithRussia, apparently to express condemnation of Turkey's attack on the Su-24, which led to the death of one of its pilots, as well as a second Russian soldier who was killed in a subsequent search-and-rescue operation.
One of the images RT says Internet users are sharing to show solidarity with Russia is a peace symbol with a military aircraft superimposed over the center, recalling the peace symbol the Russian Foreign Ministry promoted after determining that the October 31 plane crash in Egypt was a terrorist attack. (This earlier plane-peace symbol was itself a reference to the Eiffel-Tower peace symbol created by French illustrator Jean Jullien in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks on November 13.)
Прошу поддержать акцию pic.twitter.com/0FmpyCxhNr
— Чебупель Залго (@AndreyZalgo) November 24, 2015
Asking for your support.
According to Twitter user @AndreyZalgo, however, he created the warplane-peace symbol image as a joke, before it had been revealed that Turkey's attack on the Russian Su-24 led to the loss of life.
This post is part of RuNet Echo, a Global Voices project to interpret the Russian language internet. All Posts · Read more »
2 comments
Kevin, why don’t you write anything about the drivers’ strike in Russia? IMHO, people who fight for their rights are more interesting than a bunch of hooligans and trolls.