Is the Russian flag a symbol of war?

In nearly three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people have left Russia. 

Many of them fled the country out of fear that they would be drafted, while others left in rejection of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government and the war in Ukraine. 

Outside Russia, anti-war activists have attempted to organize and consolidate support. But these attempts have often led to harsh disagreements. The most recent debate is about whether the Russian flag has become a symbol of war.

Last month, this debate played out publicly leading up to an anti-war rally in Berlin, where only a few people waved the white, blue and red Russian flag. Most other flag bearers waved the blue and white “free Russia” flag, which, in recent years, has become an anti-war symbol.

Mikhail Fishman, a host with TV Rain, an independent online Russian news channel, attended the rally.

“For me, probably, the flag is lost already,” he said. “The thing is that it’s happening before our eyes; we don’t know, nobody knows. It’s a new reality we live in.”

In 2022, Oxxxymiron, one of Russia’s most popular rappers, released an anti-war song called “Oyda,” where he describes the “free Russia” flag: “Our flag is white as snow and blue as a river, and that’s all.”

Sergey Vlasov, who was one of the demonstrators in Berlin, said that he has also embraced the white and blue flag.

“So yes, now, we have the anti-war flag, white-blue-white flag, flag without red blood line. So now, when Putin started aggression against Ukraine, we can’t use this flag, because this flag is associated with this aggression,” he said.

But Vlasov’s friend Maria, who didn’t want her full name used for fear of being targeted by Russia, disagreed: “I believe that the Russian flag is older than Putin — this is a flag under which we defeated the Soviet Union, and I think that this is the great value for the Russians, and we need to bring it back.”

In 1991, during a tumultuous time in Russia, hard-line communists attempted a coup in Moscow. Boris Yeltsin, who later became the first president of the Russian Federation, embraced the tri-color flag as a symbol of democracy and freedom against the communists.

On Aug. 19, 1991, Yeltsin, standing on top of a tank, announced that “the army won’t act against the people,” which helped de-escalate the potentially explosive moment in Russian history. 

Later that year, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The Soviet flag was lowered and replaced by the tri-color banner, which remains the flag of the Russian Federation today.

For Maria, that moment remains significant.

“I think that if we do not have this flag, Russians who stay in Russia do not consider us as people who have Russians’ interest as a first priority, and to have the Russian flag as our symbol is the way to send the signal that we are still with the people in Russia,” she explained.

Inna Mosina, another rally attendee, said that she fled Russia three months ago. She’s in Germany on a humanitarian visa.

“At the moment, displaying the tri-color flag is inappropriate,” she said, but in the future, “the stain of the flag will be washed off.” 

“Putin has already taken so much away from us,” Mosina said. “I don’t want him to take away our flag as well.”

Ekaterina Pravilova is a history professor at Princeton University. She said that the tri-color flag originated in imperial Russia before the formation of the Soviet Union.

“When in 1991 Russian returned the imperial flag, this return was a symbol of liberation from Soviet rule, but now, we can see how Putin uses the rhetoric of restoring the Russian empire. He has a very strong imperial thinking. So now, it is no longer seen as a symbol of liberation,” she explained.

Some critics have said that the debate about the flag is a distraction and ultimately, doesn’t matter.

But Pravilova disagreed. She said that symbols concentrate ideas and “mobilize people for a cause.” “No political revolution is possible without the use of symbols,” she said.