In Cheboksary, on the evening of May 9, young people repainted the Soviet flag on a graffiti with a Ukrainian grandmother in white-blue-white colors. Today, the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Chuvashia reported that «immediately organized an inspection and identified the persons involved in this offense.»
Officers of the department drew up protocols on petty hooliganism against a 19-year-old student of a local college and his girlfriend (part 1 of article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). The police also forced the young man to apologize on camera. In the video filmed by the staff of the E Center, the student says: “I apologize to those whom I offended with my action, namely, I repainted the flag.” When asked for what purpose he did this, the Cheboksary resident replies: “I don’t know, to be honest, I just wanted to act like a hooligan.”
A photo with a repainted flag in the Kalininsky district of the city on May 10 was published by the telegram channel “About the city of Cheboksary «. The police noted that on the same day, “the image with the grandmother, which has become a symbol of a special military operation, was returned to its original appearance.”
In early April 2022, a video appeared on social networks, on which the grandmother came out to the Ukrainian soldiers with the Soviet flag, mistaking them for the Russian military. “We were waiting for you, and we prayed for you, and for Putin, and for all the people,” she said. One of the fighters handed over food to the woman, took the flag and began to trample on it. In response, the grandmother refused to ration. After that, sculptures began to be installed throughout Russia, as well as graffiti dedicated to the woman to be painted on the facades of houses.
Later, the BBC Russian service found her grandmother, she turned out to be 70-year-old Anna Ivanova from the village of Velikaya Danilovka, Kharkov region. She told reporters that she went out to the Ukrainian soldiers with a red flag, because she thought they were Russians. She hoped that they had «contacts of the Russian president» — Ivanova wanted to call him and ask him to stop the war against peaceful Ukrainians. According to her, she did not put political significance into the flag.