The nineteenth visual reminder for Adidas: The UPTI Affair

Adidas continues to align its marketing strategy with the Soviet legacy of persecution and totalitarianism, profiting from the sale of USSR-branded products.
Since the company refuses to recall its ‘USSR’ product line and publicly apologize for launching it in the first place, UCMC publishes its nineteenth protest visual.

The UPTI Affair was a series of repressions against scientists from the Ukrainian Physical-Technical Institute of 1935-1938, which led to the defeat of this scientific center and the death or departure of many of its leading scholars. The main events unfolded during the Stalinist “great terror”.

This is just one example of what the USSR really was. Throughout 70 years of Soviet rule, the populations of Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Georgians, Armenians, Moldovans, Kazakhs, and many other ethnicities were decimated, displaced, killed by artificial famine, tortured, persecuted, their lives, cultures, and livelihoods destroyed.
By using Soviet symbols for profit, Adidas is openly supporting the modern-day Russian state and its nostalgia for the USSR, a reckless obsession which led to the illegal annexation of Crimea and occupation of eastern Ukraine beginning in 2014. Since then, over 10,000 people were killed and over 1,7 mln people internally displaced as a result of Russia’s attempt to resurrect the USSR.
We demand that the company recalls these products immediately from its online/offline stores and distribution centers and issues an unequivocal apology to all those affected by this morally reprehensible sales tactic.