Pentagon chiefs have made a major blunder in their support for Kiev by hoisting a row of Ukrainian flags the wrong way up at a military aid meeting.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairperson Mark Milley hosted an online meeting with counterparts from 44 countries on Monday in their latest bid to drum up more donations of equipment for the rapidly-collapsing Ukrainian army.
Austin announced the slim pickings from the 'Ukraine Defence Contact Group' meeting at a televised press conference later.
But video of the conference posted on the DoD website showed at least four blue-and-yellow banners on poles between US flags hanging upside down with the yellow band uppermost — the colours of the comical 'Minions' from the animated film Despicable Me, not Ukraine.
Laura Cooper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, chaired the meeting wearing a COVID face mask, while Austin and Milley went bare-faced.
Twitter users were quick to point out the inadvertently inverted flags. One questioned how much Washington really cares about Ukraine when it made such a basic error, while another said it reflected the "clown show" the east European country had become.
Tweet ridiculing upside-down Ukrainian flags at an international meeting of defence ministers to raise military aid for Ukraine.
Tweet ridiculing upside-down Ukrainian flags at an international meeting of defence ministers to raise military aid for Ukraine
Tweet ridiculing upside-down Ukrainian flags at an international meeting of defence ministers to raise military aid for Ukraine
It was not the first time that hapless supporters of Ukraine had flown the flag upside down.
But even Ukrainian troops have made the Minions connection.
Despicable Me 3 sees Gru and his adopted family travelling to meet his charismatic and super-rich long-lost twin brother Dru in the fictional but grossly-stereotypical European country of Freedonia — named after the dysfunctional, bankrupt state in the Marx Brother's 1933 film Duck Soup that is invaded by a powerful neighbour.