This Russian bank’s Christmas advert might not make you feel terribly festive

Russia’s Moskovsky Kreditny Bank has caused a stir with its Christmas advert – what says the holidays more than getting kidnapped and tortured by Santa?

The ad sees Russia’s Father Christmas (Ded Moroz) take a working single mother on a painful journey, after receiving a letter from her daughter.

“I know my mother is very busy. She buys me toys. But more than anything, I want to be with my mom. Please bring her back to me,” the little girl writes.

A few days into the kidnapping venture, Ded Moroz appears to have a heart attack. The mother tries to help him, prompting him to at last hand over her daughter’s letter. The drawing then comes alive, and mother and daughter are reunited, with the advert ending with the slogan: “Time to think about the main things”.

The advert has sparked a backlash among women, who perceive it to be an attack on working mothers.

“The first thing the authors of this clip tell us is that a successful woman cannot be a good person,” Anastasia Karimova wrote in Cosmopolitan Russia.

Source: The Moscow Times