VELYKA DANYLIVKA, Ukraine — In the ruins of Mariupol, in a central square that the Russian occupation authorities have renamed after Lenin’s Young Communist League, a senior Kremlin official discovered the statue of an old woman waving a red Soviet flag.
The image, reproduced on statues, frescoes and similar posters in Russia and occupied Ukraine, celebrates Anna Ivanova, a resident of this village on the outskirts of Kharkiv, as a symbol of Russia’s just cause in the war.