Penelope Cruz bombarded with Nagorno-Karabakh comments on Instagram as users mistake Colombian flag on film poster for Armenia’s

Hollywood star Penelope Cruz has been unwittingly dragged into an online battle over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, after social media users falsely assumed she had posted an image of the Armenian flag.

The Spanish-born actress shared a photo of the poster advertising her upcoming 2021 action thriller ‘The 355’, about a formidable team of international female secret agents. It shows Cruz in character as a Colombian, posing with the yellow, blue and red flag of Colombia in the background. But many apparently confused it with the flag of Armenia, which is red, blue and orange.

“Karabakh is Azerbaijan!” many Azerbaijani commenters wrote. Users from Armenia responded in kind. “Artsakh is Armenia and that’s it,” a person wrote, using the Armenian name of the mountainous region.

Some took a more lighthearted approach to the situation, joking about the supposed historic ties between Colombia and Armenia. “They will soon write that Colombia is ancient Armenian land,” one quipped. Others joked that Cruz might even be Armenian, and that “there haven’t been so many Armenians in Colombia since the Big Bang.”

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