Denunciation: A yellow jacket against a blue sky – that's enough to be denounced in Russia

At the beginning of April, journalist Antonida Smolina, who lives in a small town near Volgograd, received a visit from the police. A man reported her to the authorities, the police officer said, because of a photo. The attentive reader discovered this on her page on VKontakte, a Russian social network. Smolina can be seen in the picture wearing a yellow down jacket, standing on the beach, with the sea behind her and a cloudy, yet blue sky. The unknown informer explained in a report that he associated this color combination with “hostile symbolism.” After all, the Ukrainian flag also looks like this: yellow like the jacket, blue like the sky. He reported his suspicions to the police.

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