https://video.echelon.pl/videos/watch/b79832db-f5ed-481e-8a11-176012ac9a7a A new trend has gone viral on Instagram: Russian-speaking users in European countries are responding en masse with videos showing European cities decorated with Christmas lights, countering fables by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova that EU countries have been "forced to abandon festive street lighting" and have "plunged into darkness." In early December, Zakharova claimed that the halt of Russian energy imports had dealt a serious blow to the European Union. "She opened her mouth - and lied," one of the comments says about Zakharova. The same videos, by the way, nicely counter Russian media claims that "Christmas is banned in Europe" which usually go along stories of widespread "islamisation" and "racial replacement", which are also happily picked up by some American politicians. Meanwhile, reports say that power outages have surged inside Russia itself over the past ten months. From January to October, 4,189 power outages were recorded at energy facilities - more than one-third higher than during the same period last year. Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:28:32 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.echelon.pl https://video.echelon.pl/client/assets/images/icons/icon-512x512.png https://video.echelon.pl/videos/watch/b79832db-f5ed-481e-8a11-176012ac9a7a All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.echelon.pl/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.