MEDUZA/EN/VHF

The first photos and videos featuring Russian military vehicles with an unknown marking on their sides appeared on social media several weeks before the start of the war. Most often, it was the letter Z, either inside of a box or without it; there were also V's. The letters were most likely tactical markings referring to Russia's various military districts. Then, in a matter of days, Z and V (but especially Z) essentially became the official symbol of Moscow's "special military operation." Whose idea was it to make Z one of the key elements of Russian propaganda? No one knows for sure. The organizers of the rallies and allegedly spontaneous flash mobs across the country, tasked with depicting nationwide support for the invasion, don't actually know what Z means. Meduza found a man who claims it was his and his associates' idea, commandeered by the state propaganda machine.

There's no doubt that the sanctions passed against Russia by the U.S., the EU, and others will have an enormous effect on Russia's economy, while the exodus of international companies from the Russian market will have a significant impact on the country's employment rate. To get a sense of how these changes will affect people's lives, Meduza spoke to Natalia Zubarevich, an economist and geographer who has spent her career studying economic development and its distribution in Russia.

It's been two days since Roskomnadzor blocked Instagram in Russia. The agency, which is in charge of telecommunications control and censorship, believes that the social network is filled with "calls to commit violent actions against Russian citizens and military personnel." Russia's Attorney General has called for Meta, Instagram's parent company, to be blacklisted as an "extremist organization." At present, the social network is still accessible through VPN, but no one knows if circumventing the block could lead to criminal charges. We asked Meduza readers about what Instagram has meant to them. Here are their answers.

On the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, protests broke out across the world. Weeks later, thousands of people continue taking to the streets to demand Russian troops leave Ukrainian territory and stop the war. Many of them use a symbol that began appearing alongside traditional Ukrainian flags in late February: the white-blue-white flag, whose advocates say Russia's traditional tricolor flag is tied to bloodshed. Meduza tells the story of this flag's creation -- and what its future might hold.

On March 15, 2022, in Correctional Colony No. 2 in the town of Pokrov in Russia's Vladimir region, Alexey Navalny was put on trial yet again. Federal prosecutors asked Moscow's Lefortovo court to sentence Navalny, who stands accused of fraud and contempt of court, to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony. Navalny used the opportunity to address the public, giving two emotional pleas: one during oral arguments and another during his closing statement. According to Mediazona, the courtroom broadcast was repeatedly interrupted, so journalists weren't able to hear all of what was said. Below are both of Navalny's statements, with some unavoidable omissions. The first comes from The Insider, and the second comes from Mediazona. The verdict will be announced at 10 am on March 22.

During a live broadcast on Monday evening, March 14, on Channel One Russian state television, a station employee named Marina Ovsyannikova ran out on stage behind the news anchor, unfurled an antiwar sign, and shouted antiwar slogans. Ovsyannikova managed just a few seconds on the air before the transmission cut away to another segment. She was later arrested, held overnight, convicted the following evening of the misdemeanor offense of inciting unpermitted protests in a prerecorded statement that circulated on social media, fined 30,000 rubles (roughly $250), and released. Federal investigators are still reviewing her televised protest and might press separate, possibly felony charges. Meduza spoke to Ovsyannikova's colleagues and pieced together her story. Though she alone has even dared such a disruption of Russian broadcast television, Ovsyannikova's personal opposition to the war against Ukraine is not uncommon among those who work for Russian state TV, Meduza learned.

The town of Volnovakha lies 60 kilometers (almost 40 miles) outside Donetsk. Or rather it used to. On March 11, Russia's Defense Ministry announced that soldiers from the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic had "liberated" the town. Ukrainian officials phrased this a bit differently, saying that Volnovakha no longer exists. Before Moscow's full-scale invasion, more than 20,000 people lived here. Look at it now.

Over the last few weeks, thousands of people have fled Russia, hoping to avoid the domestic political, social, and economic consequences of war. But those people are in the minority -- not everyone can leave home and move to a new country with such little notice, no matter how much they might want to. Some people have remained in Russia for family reasons, others can't afford to leave, while others have made conscious decisions not to leave on principle. We asked our readers to tell us why they decided to stay in Russia (or why they didn't have a choice), and we're publishing their answers below.

For over two weeks, Mariupol has been under siege: water, food, medicine, electricity, and means of communicating with the outside world are all scarce. Meanwhile, Russian bombs continue to fall. On March 9, the Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian forces had bombed the maternity wing of the city's Hospital No. 3. Kyiv later announced that the airstrike had killed three people (including a child) and injured 17 others. The Russian government tried (unsuccessfully) to convince people the story was fake, and that the photo and video evidence had been "staged." Meduza spoke to Ukrainian journalist Artem Popov, who managed to escape from Mariupol last week, about life under siege.

The millions of families spread across Russia and Ukraine now find themselves on opposite sides of a war. And in recent weeks, many on the Ukrainian side of the border have learned the hard way that their relatives in Russia would rather believe the Kremlin's story than their family's first-hand accounts. Meduza spoke with Ukrainians who have had trouble convincing their Russian relatives of even the most basic facts about the war in Ukraine.