It’s the holiday season in Moscow, where the city has put up symbols of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine outside the entrance to Gorky Park: the Latin letters Z, V and O in throbbing neon, looming over slogans urging Russians to think of “victory” and their “valiant” soldiers as they head off to the park’s ice rink.
We’re almost a year into the war, and the Kremlin still has yet to explain what exactly the letters — first seen spray-painted on Russian tanks — are meant to signify. But set alongside the snow-capped firs and kitschy grottoes, their meaninglessness is their defining feature; they are just part of the fabric that lets Muscovites go about their lives as if nothing has happened.
