Russian court bans memes portraying Putin as modern-day Hitler
Russia has banned dozens of memes depicting Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler because they supposedly 'encourage terrorist activities'.
A regional court declared all images contained on 12 webpages 'prohibited for distribution'.
They include 88 results from a search on a Russian image hosting site for the term 'Putler Kaput'.
A slogan popular among anti-Putin activists, it literally means 'Putler Broken', deliberately merging the surnames of Putin and Hitler.
The memes include images of the Russian president with the Nazi leader's infamous mustache and fringe superimposed on his face.
The court also banned images searched on a similar site using the term 'kaput', only they include dozens of pictures that have nothing to do with Putin.
Most of them are stills or promotional images associated with the 2008 Russian spy comedy 'Hitler Goes Kaput!', in which a Soviet officer infiltrates the SS and kidnap Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun.
Other banned images include photos taken at anti-war protests in Russia, and graffiti on a wall in Paris showing a young girl waving a Ukrainian flag while trampling on miniature tanks.
The court also outlawed a painting of sunflowers growing out of an upturned Russian military helmet which has a bullet hole leaking blood from it.
Russian state prosecutors said the webpages were found during 'monitoring of the internet' required by counter-terror legislation. More Trending
According to the court's ruling, issued earlier this month, they said the images and inscriptions 'discredit the President of the Russian federation'.
They argued the memes 'negatively affect the interests of society and the state' and 'encourage an indefinite number of persons to commit terrorist activities'.
Judges at the Kirov District Court of Omsk, where the case was heard, said the prosecutors' claimed were all 'justified' and ruled in favour of the ban.
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