Toilet paper printed to look like Russian 1,000-ruble notes is now banned from sale in Russia. The news was first reported on July 15 by Vyorstka, an independent news website formed in opposition to the destruction of independent media, and then in the July 18 issue of The Moscow Times, the English language journal that was designated as a foreign agent in 2023 by Russia’s Ministry of Justice.

A lawsuit was brought by prosecutors in Moscow’s Preobrazhensky District Court against the websites of four online stores that sold the toilet paper.

The face of the official note, first issued in 1997, has a monument to Prince Yaroslav the Wise and in the background the chapel of the Yaroslavl Kremlin. The note back has the Bell Tower and Church of John the Precursor in Yaroslavl. Yaroslav the Wise was an 11th-century Kyivan Rus prince who was made a saint and, in 2016, canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Judge Yelena Lukina agreed with the prosecution’s argument and ruled that the toilet paper “offends the religious feelings of believers. In a free democratic society, the dissemination of information materials of an unlawful nature capable of offending the religious feelings of believers cannot be protected by freedom of thought, speech, opinion, and information.”

The four website stores were Startex, Filkina Gramota, Glavchudo, and Sima-land. The latter is known for pro-Putin flashmobs in 2021 as elsewhere protests called for the release of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

So far, the offending toilet paper is removed from two of the websites.

At current exchange rates, 1,000 rubles equals $11.40.

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