Meme originator Christian Borys was interviewed on CNN on Tuesday to talk about the phenomenon.

Source: CBC

When Christian Borys decided to make 100 stickers of "Saint Javelin" to raise money for children in Ukraine, he didn't expect it to make that much of an impact.

"I thought I was going to have a couple of stickers on my car," he says. "I thought I was going to convince some friends to give me ten bucks and then I could donate, you know, $500 or something like that."

Instead, he went viral.

Memes have become powerful things. In the last decade, we've seen internet memes totally upend political systems. In Ukraine, the Saint Javelin meme has become a powerful symbol of resistance to Russian occupation.

At first glance, Saint Javelin doesn't look that much different from any other piece of religious iconography. It features Mary Magdalene, rendered in a style of portraiture common in Eastern Orthodox churches, looking out beatifically. Look closer, though, and you'll realize that she's holding an American-made FGM-148 Javelin missile launcher.

Oleksii Reznikov is the Ukrainian Minister of Defence.