Posing With a Rebel Flag? Say It Isn’t So!
Every once in a while, something similar to the Civil War happens in current events. This is just one instance:
Austrian Opera Diva Criticized for Posing with Rebel Flag.
In St. Petersburg, Russia the renowned opera singer Anna Netrebko has placed herself on the side of the secessionists in eastern Ukraine, by posing with a flag of the Federal State of Novorossiya (or “New Russia,” consisting of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic) during an event at which she donated 1 million rubles to the cause of building an opera house in the war-torn city of Donetsk.
She posed with the flag and with Oleg Tsaryov, a former member of Ukraine’s parliament who sides with secessionists.
A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Austria, where Netrebko lives and has dual citizenship, said, “Her meeting with a separatist leader and having a photo taken in front of a separatist flag is highly problematic. Given the really difficult situation we are facing in Ukraine, this is anything but helpful.”
Austrian Airlines also severed its celebrity-endorsement contract with her, adding, “We distance ourselves from extreme political positions and the use of armed violence.”
Is it just me? Or does the Ukrainian secessionists’ flag look familiar?
The flag of New Russia, or Novorossiya, has been around for a few months. The Moscow Times reports that similarities to the Confederate flag are apparently not intentional.
They located the Ukrainian credited with introducing the design; he says he merely found it, in the Times’ words, “online somewhere.” And in such a manner is the course of history determined.
(Article courtesy of Dixie Heritage Newsletter, Feb. 3, 2107 ed.)
