Even in war or in "special military operations" there are phenomena that raise questions on both sides of the front.

For the past week, anyone who has been using the Russian media to find out about what is happening in Ukraine has seen seemingly cheerful uniformed men advancing, with the letters V and Z painted on their tanks and armored vehicles.

On the other hand, if you look at Ukrainian and other Telegram channels, you will see the same letters on the pictures of destroyed Russian vehicles, which often still contain the corpses of killed soldiers.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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What do V and Z really mean?

Various speculations were circulating on social media, sometimes about cardinal points, sometimes about the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj, who chose the Z as an emblem for his 2019 election campaign.

A week after the start of the invasion, the Russian Ministry of Defense clarified the letters in a post on the American social media Instagram on Thursday morning.

Accordingly, the letters stand for the English transcriptions of the initial letters of Russian prepositions from two slogans.

"Z" comes from "Za pobyedu", which for the German reader would be transliterated "Sa pobjedu", meaning "For victory".

"V" does not mean "Victory" or "Sieg", as one might think in Western schools of thought, but according to Moscow's military stands for the English transcription of the preposition from the Russian bon mot "Sila v pravdye" ("Sila w pravdje") , meaning "In truth lies power."

Use for internal mobilization

The "V" harks back to the 2000 cult film Brat 2, specifically a scene in which the hero - a young Russian who ended up in the United States - questions a cowed American , in which "the power" or, according to another translation, "strength" lies.

Without waiting for the answer, he is convinced that it does not lie in the money, which the other person has so much of, but in "the truth".

Because whose side the latter is on is “stronger”.

Even President Vladimir Putin himself has already made the quote;

it should give hope of triumphing despite the material superiority of the other side.

Simultaneously with the official deciphering of the letters, an attempt is now being made to generate support for the "special operation" in social media, apparently because the leadership believes that there has been a lack of it so far.

Duma deputy Marija Butina, 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. She writes about a legislative project that the lower house is supposed to pass this Friday and which will punish "inaccurate information" about "activities" of the Russian armed forces with up to 15 years imprisonment, "lie factories" should no longer exist, "especially now, at such a difficult time for the country and for the world.

There is power in the truth.

Z."

In another post, Butina calls on all Russians to draw a Z on their clothes to "support our army and our president," and in one clip draws a white Z on a black lapel.

Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roskosmos space agency, replaced the Cyrillic soft S with a Z as a sign of solidarity in the Telegram channel that bears his name. The result is a mixture of Russian and English that seems forgiving and not quite the Russian that is otherwise invoked fight for survival, which according to Putin is to be carried out in Ukraine.

So far, however, his supporters have not criticized the fact that "Anglo-Saxon" letters of all things were chosen as symbols for the "special operation".