Yarosh's Business Card

Confirmed 65,703

Part of a series on 2014 Ukrainian Revolution. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Yarosh's Business Card (Ukrainian: ВизиткаЯроша) refers to a business card for the Ukrainian presidential candidate Dmytro Yarosh^[4] that was purportedly discovered at the scene of a deadly shootout in Slovyansk, Ukraine on April 20th, 2014. In the hours after the incident, reports of the shootout and the discovery of Yarosh's business card quickly circulated throughout Russian news media, while Ukrainians on Twitter responded to the accusations of Yarosh's involvement by creating photoshopped parodies of the so-called crime scene evidence.

Background

On April 20th, 2014, the Russian news outlet Life News reported that a business card belonging to Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist political party Right Sector and a candidate for the upcoming Ukrainian presidential election, was discovered in the aftermath of a shootout in Sloviansk, Ukraine (shown below). The incident, which occurred at a checkpoint controlled by pro-Russian activists at approximately 3:00 AM, claimed the lives of three people and left three injured. Following the alleged discovery of the business card, the Russian Foreign Ministry officially blamed the attack on members of Right Sector Ukrainian political party.

Notable Developments

Right Sector Response

On the same day, Right Sector spokesperson Artem Skoropadskiy called the allegations of Yarosh's involvement in the shootout "absurd" and a "staged act of provocation" targeting far-right groups in eastern Ukraine.^[2]

On Twitter

Shortly after Life News released a photograph of the business card, Twitter users began posting photoshopped images with superimposed cutouts of the card accompanied by the hashtag "#ВизиткаЯроша" (shown below).

More lucky owners of Yarosh's business card in ukrpravda's selection: https://t.co/Ytrlh7ItZ7 |EMPR #ВизиткаЯроша pic.twitter.com/fZoP0UHmrC
— Euromaidan PR (@EuromaidanPR) April 20, 2014

#ВизиткаЯроша pic.twitter.com/nJB1HBLlX5

— Nikita Khairudinov (@nickson_9) April 20, 2014

pic.twitter.com/CerbAEv7wn

— zhgun (@zhgun) April 20, 2014

Meanwhile, the novelty Twitter account @vizitkayarosha^[3] was launched, highlighting notable examples of the photoshop meme. According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[1] over 44,000 tweets containing the hashtag "#ВизиткаЯроша" were posted within the first 24 hours.