vatnik

plural vatniks · plural vatniki · alternative vatnyk

1. A Russian style of quilted jacket.

   Two models each for men and women are featured at prices ranging from 100 to 140 rubles, more than the cost of a 'vatnik.' (The ruble is nominally valued at four to $1.)

   1959, Men's Wear

2. derogatoryAn unintelligent Russian patriot.

   A vatnik basically refers to a Russian who is not too bright and who loves him some Putin.

   2017, Erin Coyne, Igor Fisun, What They Didn't Teach You in Russian Class: Slang Phrases for the Cafe, Club, Bar, Bedroom, Ball Game and More, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN

   4 more examples

   Vatnik, originally a name of a warm cotton-padded Russian jacket that is still used sometimes in rural areas, has a broad meaning of all people with imperial Russian ideology.

   2015 January 5, Oksana Grytsenko, “Ukrainian wartime glossary: Ukrop, Vatnik and more”, in Kyiv Post (news), →ISBN

   To mock the audience and depict the Russian man as a vatnik [uneducated hurray patriot] or a gopnik [in English: chav] seems totally inappropriate to me.

   2017, Lena Jonson, Andrei Erofeev, Russia - Art Resistance and the Conservative-Authoritarian Zeitgeist, Routledge, →ISBN

   At first, vatniks were pro-Russian citizens, in the view of some, Sovietized lumpenproletariat, who supported the separation of Crimea and close ties with [Russia].

   2017, Anna Matveeva, Through Times of Trouble: Conflict in Southeastern Ukraine Explained from Within, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 198

   […] many pro-Maidan FB-users whose posts I analysed saw themselves as nothing less than the standard-bearers of civilization: 'The work on vatniks requires huge efforts, but this is what distinguishes civilization from barbarism' (FB-user 15, Kyiv).

   2020, Natalia Knoblock, Language of Conflict: Discourses of the Ukrainian Crisis, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 109

   Synonyms: sovok, portyanka

3. InternetbroadlyderogatoryneologismA supporter of Vladimir Putin, Russian nationalism, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022; a Putinist.

   Synonyms: Putinist, zigger, Ivan

4. InternetbroadlyderogatoryneologismA soldier in the Russian armed forces involved in the invasion of Ukraine.

   Synonyms: orc