Image via The Moscow Times.

Russia is good and mad that Soviet statues in Bulgaria are far more colorful than they were intended to be.

The Moscow Times’ Anna Dolgov reports Russia is now demanding Bulgarian officials make cleaning up various monuments in Sofia a priority.

Dolgov writes, “The Russian Embassy in Bulgaria has issued a note demanding that its former Soviet-era ally clean up the monument in Sofia's Lozenets district, identify and punish those responsible, and take ‘exhaustive measures’ to prevent similar attacks in the future, the news agency reported Monday.”

One of the statues in question is the one pictured above, reportedly taken by Ignat Ignev and posted on Wikicommons. By the looks of it, Russian officials aren’t the least bit amused by the Justice League. Or perhaps they are annoyed, as is this writer, that vandals would choose to mix comic-book references so brazenly.

From the looks of it we have, from left to right, a classic green army man toy, Joker, Wolverine, Santa Claus, Superman, possibly a Ronald McDonald, Captain America, Robin and Wonder Woman. Really, it’s tacky to mix DC and Marvel like that.

Reportedly, this is hardly an isolated incident, because similar artistic endeavors took place when Soviet troop statues were painted with colors representing the Ukrainian flag.

Dolgov also writes that, “A Soviet army monument in Sofia was painted pink in an "artistic apology" for Bulgaria's support of Soviet troops who suppressed Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring revolt against Moscow-based communist rulers.”

Protesters, it seems, can get extremely creative when they have the will and, most importantly, the requisite amount of paint.  

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