The crime drama Russia and Ukraine want to ban

Ukrainians and Russians agree on very little lately, but a Russian TV series has created an unlikely connection. In both countries, audiences are lapping it up and bureaucrats want to ban it. “Slovo Patsana”, or “A Fella’s Word”, is set in the criminal underworld of perestroika-era Tatarstan. By the late 1980s, the Russian republic’s street gangs were infamous. Young kids “divided up the tarmac” of Kazan, the regional capital, under the eyes of older criminals. Those who joined the gangs were called patsany, and had protection of sorts. Those who did not, the chushpany, were targets of often extreme violence.