French journalist Fabrice Deprez, who's working in Kyiv as a correspondent for the newspaper La Croix, caught our attention with his series of tweets about what he called Russia's "weird and magnificent" regional flags featuring animals. We thought they were so cool that we're sharing them here, along with Deprez's own commentary.
The Cute Creatures Found On Russia's Weird And Wonderful Regional Flags
1
Yes, the flag of Zheleznogorsk is a bear splitting an atom. Yes, it’s cool as hell. The city was founded to support a plutonium production facility. It makes satellites now.
2
Probably my favorite flag from a purely aesthetic standpoint. It flies over the Yamal district, near the Arctic Ocean. And get this: The antlers of the deer (an important animal for the indigenous population) are flames, a nod to the region’s massive gas fields.
3
The flag of Irkutsk featuring an unknown creature that appears, according to Russia-watcher Michael Elgort, to be a beaver with the legs of a platypus holding a fox in its mouth. (Looks more like a cat of some kind than a beaver to us, but no matter.)
4
The flag of Yakutsk is kinda lame, but its coat of arms is thankfully different, showing a fierce eagle holding a proud sable. That’s one of the more historical ones, as it was first approved by Catherine II in 1790.