An elderly Russian woman has been fined 40,000 rubles ($490) for “discrediting” her country’s army — by describing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “a handsome young man.”
Olga Slegina, 70, was slapped with the penalty by a Moscow court on Tuesday after she made the complimentary comment late last year.
According to Russian human rights group Memorial Center, the senior citizen was speaking with another woman at a medical center in the city of Nalchik when she made the remark about the 45-year-old “smoking-hot” president.
In addition to complimenting his looks, Slegin said Zelensky — who previously worked as a comedian — had a “good sense of humor.”
Three people subsequently reported the elderly woman to local authorities, and she was soon arrested for breaking a draconian censorship law implemented by the Russian government amid its ongoing war with Ukraine.
According to the court, Slegnia was in violation of Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, where courts can impose hefty fines upon “natural persons and juridical persons for a ‘discrediting’ of Russian Armed Forces and its operations.”
The officer who arrested Slegnia reportedly told her that she had “no right” to praise Zelensky because he is “our enemy.”
Zelensky has become an unlikely sex symbol following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last spring.
Photos of the former actor — who has served as Ukraine’s president since 2019 — went viral at the beginning of the war, showing him clad in camouflage as he worked the front line with his country’s troops, as previously reported by The Post.
On TikTok, one groupie gushed: “Y’all, I got one thing to say. President Zelensky — daddy. All these little boys out here like, ‘Call me daddy!’ Um, no. Prove it. President Zelensky? Daddy.”
Meanwhile, one Czech designer decided to capitalize on the craze for Zelensky and emblazoned the president’s handsome face on pillows.
“Many people, mostly of the fairer sex, see him as some kind of a sex symbol, so I got the idea to make a pillow which would look like he is actually in their bed,” the designer, Tomas Brinek, told Reuters last May.
The fluffy pillows became an instant hit, with a batch of 2,000 selling out within days after orders were placed around the world.
Sadly for many admirers around the world, the Ukrainian president is off the market.
Zelensky has been married to his wife, Olena, since 2003, and the couple has two children.