The campaign’s ubiquity led many to conclude that it was an orchestrated Kremlin effort to drum up support for the war, not least because it resembled so many previous efforts. It came with a hashtag with echoes of past wars: “We don’t abandon our own.” (As in soldiers.)

“This is definitely a state-induced meme,” said Vasily Gatov, a Russian-American media analyst based in Boston. “There are always people receptive to this kind of message.” He noted that there was a small army of propagandists paid to spread the meme on social media to give it the false appearance of popularity.

The fact that some of the usual suspects lined up added to the sense of government coordination.

Maria Butina was deported from the United States in 2019 after being sent to prison for working as an unregistered agent for Russia. Now a member of the State Duma, or Parliament, she posted a video of herself drawing a white Z on the lapel of her suit jacket.