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Anna Ivanovna

Anna Ivanovna was a Ukrainian communist woman and Russian propaganda symbol during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. A resident of Dvorichna, Kharkiv Oblast, she greeted Ukrainian soldiers marching past her home with a Soviet flag in April 2022, mistaking them for Russian Army troops. She told the soldiers that she and her husband had waited and prayed for the Russian soldiers and for Vladimir Putin, and, while the Ukrainian soldiers gave her food, they went on to mock her and trample on her Soviet flag. Ivanovna responded that her parents had died for that flag in the Great Patriotic War. Russian propagandists used the isolated incident to claim that their soldiers were universally greeted as liberators, and murals, postcards, street art, billboards, chevrons, and stickers depicting "Babushka Z" were created. In May 2022, Ivanovna told Ukrayinska Pravda that she had intended to greet Russian soldiers with a Soviet flag to spare her village from destruction, and she said that she felt like a "traitor" due to Russia's propagandistic use of her image. She also expressed her lack of support for the war, and the use of "Babushka Z" as a Russian propaganda symbol ceased once it was discovered that Ivanovna did not oppose the Ukrainian regime.

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