Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Woman crowned 'Miss Charming' by Russian football league stripped of title for neo-Nazism

Posts on Olga Kuzkova's VKontakte page called for the burning of Jews and appeared to compare black children to a chocolate bar

Lizzie Dearden
Wednesday 22 July 2015 17:06 BST
Olga Kuzkova posted photos online of her posing next to neo-Nazi symbols
Olga Kuzkova posted photos online of her posing next to neo-Nazi symbols (VKontakte)

The woman crowned “Miss Charming” in a beauty pageant held by Russia’s football Premier League has been stripped of the title over alleged, neo-Nazism, racism and anti-Semitism.

Olga Kuzkova, 21, was nominated as Miss Premier League 2015 by her local club, CSKA Moscow and eventually won the “charming” award the national competition.

But Russian media who found her page on social network VKontakte quickly drew attention to a slew of apparently Neo-Nazi and white supremacist posts.

One meme posted by Ms Kuzkova shows a woman in a skimpy outfit and swastika armband grinning in front of two flaming ovens.

A translation by the Moscow Times said the caption called for the burning of Jews and “khachi” — a derogatory term for people of the Caucasus.

Another post combined photos of a Cadbury chocolate bar and a group of black children in what appeared to be a poverty-stricken village in Africa.

“I love chocolate, but after this image I developed an…aversion,” Ms Kuzkova allegedly wrote in what the Moscow Times took as an insinuation that the children and chocolate looked alike.

Ms Kuzkova also posted photos of herself suggesting support for white supremacist movements.

One showed her hugging a man, believed to be her boyfriend, with a neo-Nazi tattoo of the numbers 14 and 88 on the back of his legs.

The first number symbolises the “fourteen words” slogan used by white supremacists and 88 can be taken as code for HH – Heil Hitler – or the 88 precepts of David Lane’s racial Wotanism.

Ms Kuzkova was also seen posing next to the symbolic number and a picture of her kissing a man was captioned “white love”.

The pair were seen donning matching T-shirts with sculls and Celtic crosses – symbols also associated with white supremacists.

Ms Kuzkova reportedly offered to give up her "Miss Charming" title as the story broke in Russia on Monday but it was not removed until Tuesday, at the behest of the beauty contest’s jury.

Russia Premier League executive director Sergei Cheban was quoted by Sport-Express as saying: “We do not tolerate displays of fascism, nationalism or racism.

“It is unfortunate this has happened but…we all make mistakes in our youth and sometimes take the wrong path.

“Who is without sin? Some mistakes are easier to correct than others."

The furore has focused attention on racism in Russian football ahead of the country’s hosting of the World Cup in 2018.

Zenit St Petersburg's Brazilian striker Hulk says he frequently hears monkey chants directed at him and faces racism at “almost every game”, even on one occasion from a referee.

While serving as Fifa’s anti-racism chief earlier this year, before he was arrested on corruption charges, Jeffrey Webb said discrimination in Russia was a “big challenge” that had to be addressed at every level of the game.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in