If you’ve seen the latest promo for My Kitchen Rules 2018, you’d have a good idea who this series’ villains will be.
From the cold stares and Cold War mentions, to banging drums and ominous messages of ‘taking over the world’, viewers got a taste of the drama Olga and Valeria will be bringing to the MKR kitchen.
But Channel Seven’s decision to play up the friends from NSW’s Russian heritage has upset and offended many viewers, especially Russian-Australians.
Not because of the way the duo have been painted as the Russian baddies – MKR has always cast villain couples since the show first aired in 2010.
Or for the blatant exaggeration of Russian culture with references to vodka and war propaganda.
Rather, it’s the use of this symbol that’s prompted many fans to call for the ad’s removal, or boycott the upcoming series.

The gold symbol that features in the MKR promo is the hammer and sickle, which was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) symbol of communist power.
After the Russian revolution, the USSR adopted the hammer and sickle as the official symbol of the Soviet Union in 1922. It represented the worker-peasant alliance, with the hammer a traditional symbol of proletariat, and the sickle for the peasantry.
While it was a symbol of power to many under Stalin's communist rule, it is also a reminder to many Europeans, including Ukrainians, Polish, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Romanians and Russians, of the regime that starved and shot millions in the 1930s.
Top Comments
really what do you expect from a channel that interviewed a neonazi for his take on the so called african gangs situation in victoria ?
Focusing on the food would probably be good