Hi everyone. My name is Ivan Smurov, and I received an “SMO participant” medal.

Hi everyone. My name is Ivan Smurov, and I received an “SMO participant” medal.

It wasn’t difficult to do: one thousand rubles, an order on Wildberries, three days of waiting. At the order pickup point, I collected a small package: the medal, a blank certificate for it, and a little calendar from the manufacturer.

My medal is no different from the ones the Defense Ministry gives to participants in the war in Ukraine. It has no serial number, but that is easy to engrave at any engraving shop. The certificate can be filled out however you like, the uniform can be bought at a military surplus store, and there you are, a full-fledged “SMO guy.”

While working on a story about scammers posing as military men, I discovered that passing yourself off as an “SMO veteran” in present-day Russia is very easy. Hundreds of state awards are sold on marketplaces: Hero of the Russian Federation stars, Orders of Courage, Wagner PMC crosses.

These are not just “cheap copies” or “mock-ups” either. I found out that some of these awards are made by literally the same manufacturers that fulfill government contracts. That means in the morning you make an order of “real” medals for the state, and in the evening you ship exactly the same medals without serial numbers to marketplaces. And in essence, there is no difference between them.

In recent years, the image of the “war hero,” the “SMO veteran,” and the “defender” has been actively cultivated by the state. Naturally, scammers take advantage of this. How can you not help the unfortunate boy who writes to you from a hospital and asks for money for medicine? How can you not spend the night with the dashing lieutenant who lost his entire company in the war and was awarded the Medal for Courage? How can you not donate money “to help the front” to a singer in camouflage and on crutches?

In the course of this work, I came across astonishing stories about people who cynically deceived those around them. And, by a strange coincidence, two such characters took pseudonyms in honor of Nazi generals: von Manstein and Heydrich.

Why people who pretend to be “hero denazifiers” are so drawn to the aesthetics of the Third Reich, I never did find out. But I did describe their schemes, find similar cases on court websites, and speak with the victims of these “fake SMO guys.” More on that is in the text on the Vyorstka website (with VPN):

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