- It has happened to McDonald's. It has happened to Vodafone. And this year, as Russia celebrated Unity Day, it happened to Dmitry Medvedev.
- When Russia's Prime Minister and Instagrammer-in-Chief posted a nature photo on his Instagram account on Wednesday morning, he tagged it #Россия ("Russia") and #здесьхорошо (literally, "it's good here").
- A nice enough picture, but maybe Medvedev should have checked before to see what company he was keeping by using that hashtag. After all, that tag has been around since last month. No surprise, then, that some users have found a way to subvert it.
- Indeed, searching Twitter or Instagram for #здесьхорошо yields all kinds of images of things that aren't quite as picturesque as the tag suggests.
- "Russia, Tula Oblast" reads the caption on this image of a dilapidated building.
- Fall foliage appears to have toppled this bench.
- While some of the more lackluster posts may not have been intended as criticism…
- …others clearly were. Like this one, drawing attention to the lifestyle of Russia's ruling elite.
- This tweet, with photos of Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov, draws attention to the fate of those who raise critical voices. Both Politkovskaya and Nemtsov were killed.
- For a hashtag intended to only show off Russia's best side, you wouldn't expect a graph of the oil price, either.
- And in a country where #здесьхорошо certainly isn't the first thought that comes to mind when driving outside of big cities, this tweet, featuring cars stuck in mud, took a deadpan approach:
- "By 2029, Russia will put cosmonauts on the moon," it reads.






