Marina Ermoshkina, a Russian television host, typically fills her Instagram with glamorous selfies: couture clad on red carpets; bikini clad on Riviera beaches; smiling aboard yachts. But last week she decided to express her anger over Chanel’s new restrictions on sales to Russian nationals, by slicing up her pearl-gray leather shoulder bag worth about $8,000.

In compliance with the European Union’s current sanctions against selling luxury goods valued over 300 euros to Russians, Chanel not only closed all its Russian stores but also instituted a policy requesting Russian customers anywhere else in the world to sign a statement promising not to wear any new Chanel purchases within their home country of Russia.

They could buy Chanel in Paris for example, but were asked not to wear it in Moscow or elsewhere in Russia. (Chanel recently clarified that the company was “currently working on improving this approach.” It also apologized “for any misunderstanding this may have caused.”)

For her handbag-slicing video, Ms. Ermoshkina appeared to be in a luxury high-rise apartment, with floor-to-ceiling windows revealing the night skyline of an unidentified metropolis.

“I am against a brand that supports Russophobia,” Ms. Ermoshkina explained in her post. “Chanel is just an accessory,” an accessory that decided to “discriminate against people on the basis of nationality, which I will not tolerate.”

In a separate video, Katya Guseva, a D.J., echoed Ms. Ermoshkina. “I am against the brand, which supports Russophobia and discrimination against women based on nationality,” she said while scissoring through a Chanel hobo. Behind her, a crystal vase of pink peonies sat atop a mirrored vanity table.

Victoria Bonya, who has modeled for Dior and Chopard, as well as for Penthouse and Playboy (and has millions of Instagram followers), posted the most dramatic video. On the terrace of a palatial villa of cream marble, Ms. Bonya, bathed in golden light and wearing only a long plaid shirt, cut through her black Chanel shoulder bag. “Chanel house does not respect their clients,” she said. “Why do we have to respect Chanel house?” With that, she flung the amputated flap of her handbag to the ground.

With their careful hair, makeup and lighting, these clips resemble fashion shoots more than they do political testimonials, which makes the destruction of expensive possessions feel like a display of heedless privilege rather than an expression of righteous patriotism. Only those insulated by extreme wealth could evince such blithe disregard for leather goods more costly than some used cars.

The women claim to have suffered nationality-based discrimination, because the Chanel corporation asked them not to wear their new Chanel merchandise in their native Russia.

Not one of the women, though, acknowledges the reason for these limits on their luxury purchases: the war in Ukraine. And not one of them mentions the nationality-based discrimination underpinning Russia’s attack on Ukrainians. While millions of Ukrainian women are fleeing with barely the clothes on their backs, mourning the loss of their homes, their country and their dead loved ones, these Russian fashionistas are raging against a luxury company’s attempts to limit their wearing of posh handbags.

There is irony in the specific brand that spurred all this Instagram outrage. While the house of Chanel was born in France, it has come to represent a generalized European luxury and elegance. And so, to destroy a Chanel bag in the name of Mother Russia is to destroy, in a way, a symbol of Europe itself.

Chanel also has a particularly deep but little-known connection to Russia, specifically to pre-revolutionary, imperial Russia. Coco Chanel’s liaison with an exiled Romanov royal, Grand Duke Dmitri, a cousin to Czar Nicholas II, profoundly influenced her aesthetic during the early 1920s. Chanel No. 5, the cornerstone of the entire brand, was created by Ernst Beaux, former perfumer to the czars (to whom Dmitri introduced Chanel). Her famous costume jewelry — the ropes of pearls, the Byzantine crosses — was inspired by Russian imperial jewels.

Chanel even hired Duke Dmitri’s sister, Grand Duchess Marie, to create Russian embroidery patterns for textiles. To this day, many design elements considered quintessentially Chanel are in fact descended from imperial Russian motifs. To attack the house of Chanel as anti-Russian is to overlook the company’s longstanding Russian connections just as Russians attacking Ukrainians as traitors ignore the deep, often familial connections between the two groups.

The final ironic twist is that Vladimir Putin’s war seems to stem from his fantasy of restoring Russia’s imperial past — and of becoming the latter-day czar of an expanded empire — yet few luxury brands contain as much Russian imperial nostalgia as Chanel.

Perhaps, for wealthy and glamorous Russian women like these influencers, being deprived of full use of their handbags constitutes discrimination. Perhaps that alone drove them to make these angry videos. But consciously or not, their performances tapped into and replayed many of the deepest issues at stake in the current war started by their country.

Fashion does not exist removed from the world’s grim realities and serious politics. On the contrary, fashion and the events it inspires function as a kind of symptomatic dreamscape, a screen onto which society projects and replays its greatest fears and turmoil. Watching these members of the Russian elite rip apart their precious handbags, straining to push sharp blades through thick leather — which is, after all, the skin of once-living creatures — it’s hard to miss the analogy to the catastrophe unfolding in Ukraine. And it’s hard not to shudder.