August 28, 2026

Love Becomes Oleg


Love Becomes Oleg
The new "Oleg" coffee. Oleg, VK.

On March 1, 2026, a new Russian law went into effect requiring that information on signs at stores, cafes, and other establishments be displayed in Russian alone. As a result, the owners of a small coffee shop near the Zlatoust city train station called LOVE faced the threat of a fine. That is, until they found a cheeky workaround.

The new regulation states that if, for example, there is a sign on the walls of an establishment that reads “coffee to go,” the owner must either replace it with a Russian-language version or add a Russian translation alongside it – with the Cyrillic text appearing first and not being smaller or fainter. This can be done without incurring significant costs. However, replacing the entire sign with the cafe’s name would mean rebranding, and that is not cheap.

According to the owners of LOVE, a new sign would cost them about R80,000 ($960), more than the cafe’s weekly revenue. Therefore, they decided to try using the letters they already had. The Latin “O” and “E” also exist in the Cyrillic alphabet. “L” and “V” are absent, but if you flip them upside down, you get Russian “Г” (G) and “Л” (L).  That’s how the word “ОЛЕГ” (which means Oleg) was formed – dismantling the old sign and swapping around some letters cost only R5,000 ($60).

A video by the owners about their misadventure went viral online. After mainstream media picked up the story, it racked up more than million views. And so, two young women from a steel-making town in the southern Urals, Lyuba ("Love") and Lera, who had poured their last bit of money and their whole souls into their modest business, won the hearts of internet users across the country. It seems that the cheerful friends, who have squeezed the maximum hype and benefit out of their situation, say that people in other cities started to recognize them. The cafe has also announced free coffee days for anyone named Oleg.


 

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