Is it true that Russian stores have started selling garbage bags dedicated to the participants in the invasion of Ukraine?

On May 1, 2023, blogs and media reported the sale of garbage bags with ZOV symbols and inscriptions in support of “SVO participants and members of their families.” We decided to check if this is true.

Ukrainian media actively wrote about “patriotic” garbage bags: NV.ua, "News Live", "Reviewer", UNIAN. From Russian news Telegram channels, in particular, they talked about this “CTD"(52,000 views at the time of publication of the analysis) and Sota (26,000 views).

First unusual garbage bags noticed Sota, which reported this on April 30. According to the publication, garbage bags with the letters ZOV, which have become symbols of the Russian invasion, are sold by the Bumaga-S company, which promises to send 1 ruble from each package sold to the needs of the war and military families.

The reliability of this news could be questionable: garbage bags are often mentioned in Ukraine in the context of Russian military losses. This began after Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in March 2022 that Russia did not want to take the bodies of its soldiers, but instead offered garbage bags for transportation. Ukrainian agency UNIAN in several reports about the losses of the Russian army wrote about the bags sent back to Russia.

However, the link in the Sota publication does lead to website the seller is a company from the Stavropol Territory “Bumaga-S”.

One might assume that we are talking about a hacking of the site, as was the case with the announcement of sale of Ukrainian black soil in a shopping center in Moscow. But the same garbage bags can be found, for example, on the trading platform wildberries.

On the website manufacturer, Avikomp company, garbage bags are placed in a separate section called “Project ZOV”. However, in this section only two items: black garbage bags of 30 and 60 liters.

Thus, Russian online stores actually sell black garbage bags with “special operation” symbols. In this case, we are not talking about a fake, but about ambiguous marketing.

Cover photo: social mediaAnd

Is it true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Is it true that they sell Ukrainian black soil in a shopping center in Moscow?
2. Is it true that Ukrainian stores sold Easter cakes with the symbols of the Azov regiment?