The news agency Fontanka.ru is being accused of offending the feelings of religious people with its April Fools’ Day joke about the disappearance of the angel from atop the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg.
Fontanka.ru’s chief editor shared on Facebook a copy of the letter he received from Sergei Kondratyev, the deputy director of the budgetary issues for St. Petersburg’s State Museum of History, where Kondratyev complained that the April 1 prank was offensive.
The Peter and Paul Fortress’ angel, Kondratyev explains in the letter, is “a symbol of St. Petersburg and a shrine for a large number of believers.” The museum official says “creating an unhealthy image around [the angel] negatively affects the city’s image.”
In the letter signed by Kondratyev, he says that yesterday’s April 1 joke by Fontanka.ru about the disppearance of the angel from atop the Peter and Paul Fortress is “questionable” and “unacceptable, even as an April Fool’s Day joke.”