VELYKA DANYLIVKA, Ukraine—In the ruins of Mariupol, on a central square that Russian occupation authorities have renamed after Lenin’s Young Communist League, a senior Kremlin official earlier this month unveiled the statue of an old woman waving a red Soviet flag.
The image, replicated in similar statues, frescoes and billboards across Russia and occupied Ukraine, celebrates Anna Ivanova, the resident of this village on the outskirts of Kharkiv, as the symbol of Russia’s just cause in the war.
