“Steal a raccoon and die,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry tweeted late Sunday. A strong statement accompanied by a video where we see a man take a raccoon out of its cage by its tail and throw it into a box.
According to the Washington Post, this man would be Oleg Zubkov, the director of a Crimean zoo. He reportedly posted videos on YouTube in which he, too, captured a llama and wolves, before deleting them. According to him, the animals would not be destined to be tortured but only to undergo a “temporary evacuation”. They will be returned to the city of Kherson – recovered a few days ago by the Ukrainian army – when it is reoccupied by Russia.
A flight that unleashes both sides
“The occupiers stole everything from Kherson: paintings from art galleries, antiquities from museums, historical manuscripts from libraries. But their most valuable loot was a raccoon they stole from a zoo,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry protested.
Many kidnappings have been carried out on pro-Ukrainian social networks to recover the animal, such as the one on the movie poster. We have to save Private Ryan. (Save Private Ryan in English) with “Save private Racoon” (“Save private raccoon” in English).
On the Russian side, this “robbery” is seen as a symbol of a struggle that is not ready to stop and has been replayed many times in the media. Anna Dolgareva, a Russian poet and blogger, wrote on Telegram that the evacuation of this raccoon was “the only good news” of the Russian withdrawal from Kherson, US media continued.
“We will not return the raccoon. We will take back Kherson,” he said before noting that a Telegram channel had been created about the “Kherson Raccoon.”
Source: BFM TV
