They are visible everywhere in these ‘special military operations’: tanks and armored vehicles with the letters ‘V’ and ‘Z’ painted on them. Sometimes they drive by quickly, sometimes they are burned out in photos eagerly distributed by Ukrainians.
What do V and Z actually mean? Western experts disagree and various, sometimes wild statements are circulating on social media: it would be cardinal directions, it would be a provocation against Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky (whose initials are VZ) and the letter Z would also specifically reserved for vehicles for the attack on Kharkov, in the east of the country.
German experts believe that the letters represent the English transcriptions of the initial letters of Russian prepositions of two slogans. Z then comes from ‘Za pobyedu’, which in translation means as much as ‘For the victory’. According to Russian sources, this also means that a military mission has been completed.
The V does not mean ‘Victory’ but for Russian soldiers it is a kind of stamp for the slogan ‘In truth lies power’. The latter, according to an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitunga whole story stuck.
Russian soldiers identify themselves with that ‘V’ because of the cult film, according to the newspaper brat 2 †brother 2) from 2000. brat 2 is a kind of Russian variant of the American Rambo films and a sequel to the hit film brat (1997). It is about a Russian veteran of the war in Chechnya. The V would refer to a specific scene from brat 2 in which the hero – a young Russian named Danilla – has turned up in the United States and asks an American what “strength” is. Without waiting for the answer, he realizes that it is not in the money that the Americans overflow with him, but in ‘the truth’, according to German media. † Even President Vladimir Putin is said to have used the quote popular in Russia.
dots
Other symbols include a triangle with two lines on either side, a circle with three dots in it, and a small triangle inside a larger triangle. Experts think the symbols could be to identify where a particular batch of vehicles is headed.
Professor Michael Clarke, former director of defense think tank Rusi, told Sky News this week: “Often these symbols will be based on location – they will indicate where a unit is going. If they only identified the vehicles as Russian – Ukrainians still have some Russian equipment, which can be confusing – you could only use one symbol. The fact that they’re different says more – they’re probably signs indicating, for example, which units are going to the northeast or northwest of a district.” According to Clarke, such markings are normally only applied shortly before an attack, so that the enemy forces cannot copy them.
T-shirt
Duma deputy Maria Boetina, a former employee of the state broadcaster RT, now shows herself on her Facebook profile picture in a black T-shirt with the letter Z. In another post, Boetina calls on all Russians to put a Z on their drawing clothes to “support our military and our president,” and in one clip she draws a white Z on a black lapel. Dmitri Rogozin, head of the space agency Roskosmos, replaced the Cyrillic soft S with a Z as a sign of solidarity in his Telegram channel.
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