A penis-headed statue of Vladimir Putin has been erected in the village of Bell End to commemorate him as “Bellend of the Year” in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The effigy appeared on Thursday morning alongside a street sign in the centre of the Worcestershire village and eggs which could be thrown at the likeness of the Russian president.
The organiser of the protest, who wished to remain anonymous, told the PA news agency: “I needed to award somebody with the Bellend of the Year award and I thought there was one person who has universally been a bellend this year – and that’s Vladimir Putin.
“You could just throw eggs at the statue, which people did so willingly and quite happily.
“It’s been very well received. One person said, ‘I thought it was my boss for a second’.”
The co-ordinator said they plan to create and sell miniatures of the statue to raise money for a charity supporting Ukrainian refugees.
“I’ve seen over the course of the year the devastation that has happened in Ukraine and that so many lives that have been displaced as a result of the war,” they said.
“So I thought, ‘I really want to help out, and I want to do my bit and I want to try and raise some money to help those individuals’.
The organiser said they want to stay anonymous to keep the “mystique” around the statue, with a further explanation about how it came to be in the village just outside Birmingham to be revealed in the coming days.
Describing how the artwork was made, they said: “I don’t know what the material is but I gave to a couple of artists and they cut it out over two or three weeks.
“Then we painted it and made a plinth, which obviously had the sign Bellend of the Year just to make sure there was absolutely no way to deny what he actually was.
“The message is pretty simple – it’s exactly what it says on the tin.”
