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By Fatma Khaled
Staff Writer
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Ukraine has reportedly claimed that Anna Ivanovna, known as "Granny Anya" and hailed a "hero" by the Kremlin, recently lost her home in a Russian artillery fire. However, it has not been immediately verified whether the woman who lost her house is Ivanovna or another person.
Ivanova became popular in April after a viral video showed her waving a Soviet flag at Ukrainian troops she thought were Russian soldiers, according to the Moscow Times.
At the time, she told the soldiers that she and her husband had "waited, prayed for them, for Putin and all the people," according to the Russian news outlet.
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But now her home in Kharkiv has been reportedly destroyed, according to a video interview posted by Kevin Rothrock, the managing editor at news website Meduza.
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Ivanova reportedly said in the interview that she "greeted who she thought were Russian soldiers with a Soviet flag in an attempt to stop them from destroying her town," according to Rothrock, who added that the interview is heavily edited and therefore her remarks might be "distorted."
This week in Mariupol, Russian President Vladimir Putin's deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko unveiled a statue of the old woman holding the Soviet flag, The Moscow Times reported. The statue has become a symbol of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Some pro-war Russians have praised the elderly woman including Andrei Turchak, a senior member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, who posted a video on Telegram in which he is seen telling the crowd at the unveiling of the monument that "Babushka Anya is a symbol of the motherland for the entire Russian world."
"Unfortunately, we don't know her full name but we'll definitely find out and have a chance to thank her and bow to her," Turchak added, according to The Moscow Times.
However, Ivanovna rejected this popularity and expressed her opposition to the war in Ukraine, according to the video interview posted by Rothrock.
"I'd rather not have this celebrity or this war. I don't want it. We'd be better off without this war," she reportedly said.
"I just came out to tell them not to crush us, to resolve things peacefully [...] and now I've ended up a traitor," she added in the filmed interview, according to Rothrock.
Meanwhile, Russia is now preparing for its May 9 Victory Day celebrations as forces occupying Mariupol reportedly plan to dress up Ukrainian "prisoners of war" in military uniforms as part of a parade, according to adviser to the city's mayor Petro Andriushchenko.
Andriushchenko said on Telegram that city officials have obtained information that around 2,000 men are currently detained in so-called "filtration camps." The adviser said they were taken from the villages of Bezimenne and Kozatske almost four weeks ago.
"These men are held there and they are told that they will be made to wear the Ukrainian [military] uniform and to participate in a so-called 'war prisoners parade' in Mariupol because they [the Russians] lack actual prisoners of war," Andriushchenko said.
"It will be a grotesque crowd scene for another propaganda image," he added.
Newsweek reached out to the foreign affairs ministries in Russia and Ukraine for comment.
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