If a Ukrainian grandmother with pro-Russian views did not exist, it would be necessary to invent her—or at least that is what the Russian government decided in April. At the time, Anna Ivanova inhabited a village near Kharkiv. One day, mistaking a group of arriving Ukrainian soldiers for Russians, she took out an old Soviet flag and waved it vigorously at them to remind them of their shared past and try to deter them from destroying the village. Instead, the Ukrainian forces, outraged at the sight of the hammer-and-sickle, took the flag from her and trampled it.
Caught on video, the episode was immediately seized on by the Kremlin. Soon, “Granny Anya” as she was called—though she’s only 69, the same age as Putin—was adopted as a potent symbol of local support for Russia’s “special operation.” Here, apparently, was living proof that the people of Ukraine were desperately waiting to be “liberated.”
