Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, previously holding the position from 1999 until 2008. He was also the Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012.
Putin, Zelensky Shown Passionately Kissing in Pride Poster
newsweek.comVolodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin kissing days before an LGBTQ pride parade.Street artist Andrea Villa hung a large poster of Putin and Zelensky kissing each other by the side of a city street in Turin on Wednesday, three days before the Turin Pride Parade on June 18.
The artist previously hung an image that depicted Putin as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in protest of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began February 24.The new poster shows Putin and Zelensky, both dressed in suits and backed by their respective national flags, locking lips while embracing one another, with Putin's arms shown perched on Zelensky's shoulders.
The hashtag #PrideAndLove is spelled out at the top of the poster.Villa told Newsweek that the image was inspired by Russian painter Dmitri Vrubel's My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, a mural located on a surviving section of the Berlin Wall.
The mural depicts Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker, the leader of East Germany, engaging in a type of platonic greeting known as the socialist fraternal kiss.While the fraternal kiss in Vrubel's painting represented the "solidity of the link between" the Soviet Union and East Germany, Villa said, the collapsed Berlin Wall exposed the contradiction of "a clearly failed experiment." Villa said that there was a "parallel with the same utopia of European peace, which has now also disappeared" due to the Russia-Ukraine war."I wanted to represent the pride (Pride) of Russia, a country that has never known a true democracy because it is too scared of losing its role as a world power," Villa said of his poster depicting Putin and Zelensky.
