'Smoking kills more people than Obama' poster appears in Russia

The poster reads, "Don’t smoke, don’t be like Obama”

A controversial advertisement in Moscow declaring “smoking kills more people than Obama” is making rounds on social media, as it labels the US president as a mass killer along with aiming to deter people from smoking.

Dmitry Gudkov, a liberal opposition MP in Russia’s parliament, on Tuesday posted a photo of the poster on his Facebook page. He had spotted the poster in a metal-and-glass frame at a bus shelter on Moscow’s third ring road.

[fbpost link="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1065731106801662&set=pb.100000943480007.-2207520000.1455775363.&type=3&theater"]



The poster, which has not been claimed by anyone yet, reads, “Smoking kills more people than Obama, although he kills lots and lots of people,” along with an image of the president smoking the last dregs of a cigarette.

“Don’t smoke, don’t be like Obama,” it added.

Gudkov wrote that it was “disgusting and embarrassing that this is appearing on the streets of the Russian capital.”

Photograph: Dmitry Gudkov/Facebook via Guardian

His post has since received over 2,000 likes and has been shared over 350 times. Hundreds of comments, both positive and negative, have also appeared.

Speaking to the Guardian, Gudkov said, “Soon they’ll be scaring kids with Obama rather than Baba Yaga (the witch from Russian folk tales).”

A few have taken the ad as referring to a “Stop Obama!” video posted last week that showed dozens of Russian students falling to the floor as if dead, revealing a lone girl with a sign claiming that the “president of the United States kills 875 people every week”.

In another video, students at universities around Russia appealed to the United Nations that Obama should be “punished for thousands of lost lives”.



Although the video appeared on new accounts, one of the speakers in the UN appeal has been identified as the editor of a publication put out by the ruling United Russia party’s youth wing.

Also in January, a banner replacing the word “hope” in Barack Obama’s iconic 2008 election poster with “killer” was hung from a residential building across from the US embassy in Moscow.

Obama said in 2013 that he had not smoked for six years.



This article originally appeared on Guardian.