A famous Belarusian prankster who has garnered a reputation for duping schools to highlight the “fascistization of Russian society” has tricked teachers in Russia's Voronezh region into wearing pro-Russia “protective” tinfoil hats.
Vladislav Bokhan, an exiled Belarusian artist and activist who lives in Poland, wrote on Telegram on November 9 that in July he sent out what appeared to be an official government directive to schools in the Voronezh region to organize events in which tinfoil hats bearing the Russian flag were made.
The hats, the order said, would “protect against foreign enemies.” The schools were also instructed to provide videos and images of the teachers wearing the hats to -- what they thought was -- the government.
In one video shared by Bokhan on Telegram, a teacher talks about the supposed benefits of the tinfoil hat, which the fake government order described as the “helmet of the fatherland.”
“Let the helmet that you make with your own hands become a means of protection against foreign enemies of our wonderful country,” the teacher says in the video.
Bokhan has staged several similar pranks aimed at opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and highlighting contradictions and hypocrisy in government rhetoric.
On Telegram, he said his latest prank was the continuation of “measuring the level of fascistization of Russian society” based on Italian historian and philosopher Umberto Eco’s renowned essay, Ur-Fascism.
Last year, Bokhan posed as a Russian lawmaker and tricked several schools into sending birthday messages to President Vladimir Putin bearing a photograph and quotes by Stepan Bandera, a World War II-era Ukrainian partisan leader who has been vilified by the Kremlin.
In 2022, Bokhan duped several Russian schools into holding marches to pay tribute to him, pretending to be a military hero serving in Ukraine.
Demonstrators were pictured holding signs saying, “Vladislav is our hero.”
Another action that Bokhan pulled off was tricking schoolteachers in a Moscow region town to participate in a municipal cleanup day carrying slogans used by Nazis at concentration camps.
