All of that more likely than not was retconned and mainly by bored westerners on the internet. It was chosen because its easy to paint, recognize and you won’t

All of that more likely than not was retconned and mainly by bored westerners on the internet. It was chosen because its easy to paint, recognize and you won’t confuse it with markings normally used by either side. Z is and boxed Z is only used by the forces which invaded eastern Ukraine and from Crimea, airborne, marines and the forces from Belarus use different recognition stripes. If anything the west made a story about it which allowed Russian propaganda to turn it into a thing. If more people would covered the fact that the Russian army is so poor that it needs to rely on recognition stripes instead of modern IFF it might not have become a nationalist symbol in Russia.