A poverty-stricken grandfather is faced with the decision to sell his beloved Lada but is saved at the last moment by his grandson who enlists to go off and fight (and die) in Putin's war on Ukraine.
There's been some online debate about whether these are authentic ads or not. They showed up last week as a series of anonymously-produced recruitment ads on Telegram. Russian bloggers were incensed by them, but Bellingcat's Christo Glazov confirmed they were Russian-made.
Source: Informer
The ad shows a Russian grandfather who has no money, so he decides to sell his old Lada car. When a potential buyer for the car offers him twice less than he asked for, the grandson appears in the uniform of the Russian army and says: "Grandpa, I signed the contract." To that, the grandfather replies: "Now we will surely be OK".
The video was also shared on Twitter by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, who wrote: "A new ad for the Russian army - simply offers you to trade a grandson for an already existing Lada."
On Russian channels, they argued about whether this recruitment ad was real or a Ukrainian psychological operation. It depicts a grandfather and grandson living in extreme poverty, where the grandson's only solution to saving his old Lada is to join the army. It turned out to be a real Russian ad - Christo Grozev from Bellingcat announced on Twitter.
Pro-Russian bloggers have called the ads fake, and probably part of a Ukrainian military psyops campaign. via the Moscow Times
Pro-war Russian-language bloggers criticized the ads, claiming that their emphasis on financial incentives for joining the Russian army betrayed what they see as more noble ideological goals.
The secrecy surrounding the ads’ origins fueled speculation among pro-war bloggers, which was immediately dismissed, that the campaign had been ordered by the Ukrainian military.
“Such a big spit on our people can only be considered a crime,” state television reporter Andrei Medvedev wrote on his Telegram messaging app channel Tuesday in response to the message conveyed to viewers.
