A zoo in Bavaria held a ceremony on Tuesday to change the name of a pig called “Putin” to a German name after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The German garden named Putin after the wild boar because of his Russian race.
Eckard Mikish, a zoo official outside the town of Melmizl, said he named the pig after Russian President Vladimir Putin three years ago when he arrived at the zoo because he was of Russian ethnicity.
He said the pig, which weighs about 200 kg, weighs about three times the weight of pigs normally found in Germany.
But lately, whenever his name has been shown to visitors, the manager has been concerned about how Ukrainian visitors feel.
He quickly came to the conclusion that there was no pig worthy of this name, so the zoo launched a campaign on social media to search for a new name for the pig.
It received about 2,700 suggestions, and Eberhofer, a policeman’s name from a popular Bavarian book series, won the vote.
The pig was rechristened on Tuesday in a ceremony that included a cake and biscuits decorated with five smiling pink pigs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an attack on pro-Western Ukraine on February 24 to “de-Nazify”.
The war has killed thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million in Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.