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A Swedish folk band was banned from performing at a benefit concert to support Ukraine because they play a Russian musical instrument, with outraged critics claiming the balalaika was as bad as displaying a Nazi swastika.

No, this isn’t the Babylon Bee.

Södra Bergens Balalaikor, a band first formed in 1969, had been scheduled to play a charity concert to support Ukraine in the Swedish city of Uppsala.

However, their appearance was cancelled after bedwetting morons complained that the balalaika, a three-string musical instrument with a characteristic triangular wooden body, was a “national symbol of Russia.”

“People wrote that the balalaika is a symbol for Russia and to play for Ukraine on a balalaika is a sacrilege. They compared it to a swastika,” Jonas Nyberg, one of the members of the orchestra, told Swedish broadcaster SVT.

“You can have some sympathy in this situation because people are upset and angry. But the argument gets a little weird. We are not Russians, we just happen to play Russian instruments, as we have done all these years. Our Ukrainian musician friends don’t understand it as well,” Nyberg added.

This is just the latest example of how anything remotely Russian, despite it having no connection whatsoever to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, is being culturally cleansed.

As we highlighted earlier this month, the British National Gallery changed the name of a 19th century painting by French impressionist Edgar Degas from ‘Russian Dancers’ to ‘Ukrainian Dancers’ due to the “current situation.”

The University of Milano-Bicocca also attempted to cancel a teaching course about the 19th century writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Russian prodigy pianist Alexander Malofee was also dropped from performing for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra after complaints by Ukrainians, while chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Valery Gergiev faced similar cancellation after failing to pass an ideological purity test.

Siberian cats were also banned from appearing in international cat competitions, while a prize-winning Russian tree was also stripped of its title.

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Featured image: Balalaika (Licensed under CC BY 3.0)