Despite the pouring rain, the main hall of St. Petersburg’s Listva bookstore is almost full. A slim, bespectacled young man dressed in a suit sits in front of the audience. He’s the type of person you could easily meet in a university auditorium, and it looks like he’s going to talk about philosophy, international policy, or history (such lectures regularly occur here). However, on this young man’s chest we notice two Orders of Courage – which are among Russia’s highest military decorations.
The man is National Bolshevik party member Stanislav Getmanets, who uses the military call sign ‘Biden’. He went to the front as a volunteer a year ago. His detachment, which became known in the Russian media as “combat anime,” was among the first to capture Western military equipment during the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s (AFU) summer counteroffensive. The fighters captured an American Bradley infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) as a war trophy. In St. Petersburg, Getmanets recounted the experience and shared what the war has meant for him personally.
Right above the veteran, there hangs a portrait of US President Joe Biden with the letter ‘Z’ (an informal symbol of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine) photoshopped onto his forehead. This is Getmanets’ own joke, since he took his military call sign “in honor” of the US president.
As the talk begins, the young man smiles at his audience. “You could say we’re about to have a personal growth seminar today. And how do you start a personal growth seminar? With a success story, of course,” he says.
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