Z (Military Symbol)
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
I'd expect other military forces to use identification marks in a similar way.
Ukraine doesn't have a better blue force tracker so any Ukrainian drivers of such vehicles would be in a huge risk.
> Isn't this style of beard typically worn more by Ukrainians than Russians?
> Does this guys have a "Z" meaning he's a Russian soldier? Or is it civilian fan of World War Z?
etc
First time I remember a symbol going from nothing to transnational sign of allegiance in ¬10 days.
Also it was also cleverly promoted by putinists as provocation since if you type letter Z strikethrough you'll get wolfsangel and therefore become a nazi, however we all know who is the real nazi in this war.
It was chosen because its easy to paint, recognize and you won’t confuse it with markings normally used by either side.
Z is and boxed Z is only used by the forces which invaded eastern Ukraine and from Crimea, airborne, marines and the forces from Belarus use different recognition stripes.
If anything the west made a story about it which allowed Russian propaganda to turn it into a thing.
If more people would covered the fact that the Russian army is so poor that it needs to rely on recognition stripes instead of modern IFF it might not have become a nationalist symbol in Russia.
what IFF do you use for every tank and truck?
Not Nazi.
> destroy holocaust memorial,
fake news and not Nazi.
war of aggression /= Nazi.
The Nazis themselves has two major non-Nazi allies doing these same things (but not the genocide, which was kind of the Nazis special talent) at the same time.
As far as I can tell, it did happen, and there is visual evidence of it.
Z, boxed Z, O, V, and a few others been used.
Recognition stripes are intended to be on one hand easily recognizable and on the other meaningless so to be not confused with symbols or markings used by any of the belligerents involved in the conflict.
The whole backstory behind them was most likely retconned by Russian propaganda simply because of the attention it drew.
If nothing else it’s a showcase of how lacking the Russian army is in comms, IFF and blue force tracking compared to western armies.
And by all accounts it doesn’t seem to even reduce friendly fire that much since the Russians have been firing on their forces too.
This isn't my observation. The OK sign was used explicitly to represent white supremacy by people who wanted to "troll" others into believing it was being used that way "earnestly". But using X symbol to represent Y is not something that is subject to earnestness nor irony - i.e. meaning follows usage, not the other way around (and that is not even considering the fact that a subset of people participating in the trolling did explicitly support white supremacy). That property is intrinsic to language. When you use a symbol to represent something, then it is being used to represent that thing. It is self-fulfilling. If I merely told you that some symbol X represented Y, then I would be lying. If I used symbol X to represent Y, and got a large enough group of other people to do it, then I am creating a new contextual meaning for symbol X. People reacting to its use are not "tricked". They are responding to a reality I have created.
This Z is just one-half svastika waiting for a meme. A symbol of dishonor.
That Putin is going all-in on using the tooling of cult mobilization in this fashion is one more indication that this doesn't stop until we stop him.
At least that's what some analysts attribute to their meaning. I suspect it's to delineate chains of command when they meet in the field.
Not once did the Wikipedia creator mention (Z)apad or (V)ostok. These vehicles are designated such to mark their order of battle during the pre-invasion pretend exercises that they came from—-West/Zapad or East/Vostok. Western brigades and divisions also have identifiers.
What is it with myth-creators and their gravitation toward symbols?
I still contend the Wikipedia initial entry was created for myth-making. It’s a good thing it can be edited.