MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. Picturing Crimea as part of Ukraine on the new uniform of Ukraine’s national football team is an agonizing artistic liberty, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.
"Ukraine’s football team has attached Ukraine to Russia’s Crimea. The explanation is as metaphysical as the agonizing artistic liberty itself - it is to cheer up the players," she wrote on her Telegram channel.
"Too bad they have to pin their hopes on this only. The technique is not new. It is called trompe-l'њil, or an art technique used to make an illusion of the impossible or, on the contrary, picturing something non-existing as though it can be touched," she noted.
According to Zakharova, placing the greeting of Ukrainian nationalists on the sports uniform is yet another attempt of Kiev’s official propaganda to reinforce the slogan "many in Ukraine and outside it link with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, outlawed in Russia), Stepan Bandera and their crimes during World War II." "Kiev is apparently seeking to distant this slogan from its uncomfortable origin and fill it with a new positive meaning to make the entire world take it as a progressive one, which is in keeping with the global agenda," she explained.
She noted that the slogan Glory to Ukraine! Glory to Heroes! echoed a Germany Nazi rallying cry. "During the war, the Nazi cry was used in regular and irregular Ukrainian nationalist armed groups, most of which was loyal to Nazi Germany and some were even part of the German army. After the war, this slogan was used by bandits in western Ukraine and former UPA militants who surrendered to US troops and dodged justice living in the West. <…> Organizers and spectators of the European football tournament must know that," she stressed.
Head of Ukraine’s Football Association Andrei Pavelko said earlier on Sunday that Ukraine’s national team at the UEFA Euro would wear uniforms with the slogan of Ukrainian nationalists Glory to Ukraine! Glory to Heroes! It will also feature Ukraine’s outlines, with Russia’s Crimea and Donbass republics Kiev doesn’t control as part of Ukraine.