The companies Unilever Russia, Mars, Inc., Magnit, and Yandex Lavka have all pulled their advertisements from the YouTube show ‘Comment Out’ after a guest on the show was asked to make offensive social media posts about the ongoing protests in Belarus and Khabarovsk.
The episode in question came out on August 31. It featured Russian singer Lolita Milyavskaya and the frontman of the band The Hatters, Yuri Muzychenko, as guests. The latter was tasked with writing an Instagram comment to Russian figure skater Evgeny Plushenko about the protests in Belarus and the white-and-red flag that has become a key opposition symbol. Muzychenko was expected to make the following comment: “Here’s a riddle, who even thought of making such a protest flag for Belarus? The answer: Tikhanovskaya when she saw the period marks on a pad! Get it?”
If Muzychenko refused to write the comment, he would have to post a photo of the protests in Khabarovsk on his own Instagram, with the caption “Know the difference between a penis and thumb. Khabarovsk isn’t Belarus! No concerts there! A dirty town that’s standing up for a killer. Something tells me the new banya prince will wash this riff-raff.”
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