Putin, Zelensky Seen Kissing Passionately In New Poster For Pride Parade

Posters of Russian President Vladimir Putin kissing his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky have popped up in several areas of an Italian city that is set to host an LGBTQ pride parade this weekend.

The image, which was created by an anonymous street artist known only as Andrea Villa, appeared in the neighborhoods of Corso San Maurizio and Viale Primo Maggio in Turin Wednesday, Prima Torino reported.

It was displayed three days before the Turin Pride Parade, a demonstration advocating for LGBTQIA+ rights, was scheduled to take place in the city Saturday.

Villa used both the Russian and Ukrainian flags as a backdrop for Putin and Zelensky's kiss, while the hashtag #PrideAndLove was superimposed over the two leaders.

Villa's image was inspired by the work of Russian painter Dmitri Vrubel, the street artist said. Vrubel's 1990 graffiti piece on the Berlin Wall, titled "My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love," featured Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker, the former leaders of the Soviet Union and East Germany, respectively, sharing a socialist fraternal kiss.

"[Vrubel's work depicted Brezhnev and Honecker] in the act of exchanging a brotherly kiss on the lips to greet each other in an official ceremony. It had to represent the solidity of the link between the two countries, the same that the now collapsed [Berlin Wall] highlighted as a clearly failed experiment. A parallel with the same utopia of European peace, which has now also disappeared," Villa wrote said in an Instagram post.

"I wanted to represent the pride (Pride) of Russia, a country that has never known a true democracy because it is too scared of losing its role as a world power, and the hope (Love) that the two states (Russia and Ukraine) can make peace and end the conflict," the political satirist explained.

Villa previously went viral over a mock advertisement he made that depicted Putin with the mustache of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

While he has sometimes been called the "Turin Banksy," Villa said in an interview with Italian newspaper Libero Pensiero that he did not want to be compared with the anonymous England-based artist because their paths and careers were "totally different."