Military official calls photo of feminist banner hung off Kremlin tower a fake

The Kremlin’s military commandant Sergei Khlebnikov said that a photograph of a banner reading “The National Idea is Feminism” hanging off of the Kremlin’s Corner Arsenal Tower was a fake.

“There was no banner [hanging off] the tower. It was a montage. This will be on the conscience of those people who did this. Everything else in that photo was true,” said Khlebnikov on air on the radio station Echo of Moscow.

The commandant stressed that the Corner Arsenal Tower “is guarded by an alarm system, video surveillance, and other means that he has no right to talk about,” insisting that unauthorized entry to the tower would be out of the question.

On Wednesday, OVD-Info reported that at least seven people had been detained in Moscow for hanging a banner of the walls of the Kremlin with the inscription “Men in power for 200 years. Out with them!” The protesters had also allegedly hung a banner reading “The National Idea is Feminism” off of the Kremlin’s Corner Arsenal Tower.

A video of the protest had been uploaded to Facebook. It depicts two girls holding flares and a banner. According to artist Ekaterina Nenasheva, who posted the video on Facebook, amongst those the detained were two protest participants and a photographer from the publication Novaya Gazeta.

After the protest, commentators on social networks noted that the only photo of the banner hanging off the Kremlin tower was posted by one of the protest organizers. An analysis of the photo, some users said, suggested that the photograph had not been produced on March 8 and had instead been edited.

Representatives of Russia’s Federal Security Service stated that there had been no “[forced] entry” on to the tower and refused to comment further.