Russian officials have threatened a Swiss newspaper with legal action after it published an image depicting President Vladimir Putin as a clown. The Zurich newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung published the piece “Between Superheroes and Villains: The Power of Memes in the Ukraine War”. He discussed how viral images played a role in the debate over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The main image featured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a post-Putin Iron Man with a clown nose and colorful face paint. His intention appears to have been to illustrate the type of imagery used, rather than to suggest that the paper or its writers consider Putin a clown. The Russian embassy in Switzerland responded with a letter to the newspaper’s editor, describing itself as “extremely outraged” by the image. The letter argued that freedom of speech was no excuse for publishing “insults and falsehoods.” It was particularly offensive about the rainbow colors on Putin’s face, citing his hostility to LGBTQ people. He also objected to what he called the article’s portrayal of Putin as a war criminal, a charge shared by Ukrainians, human rights monitors and Western officials. The message ended with a reference to Switzerland’s defamation laws and said officials “reserve the right … to apply to Swiss law enforcement” to take action over the image.
