The recent scrutiny of racism in the 2018 World Cup host Russia has expanded to include the world’s largest energy drink brand, after a video from a Red Bull event in Moscow showed a Barack Obama impersonator chasing a banana.

The controversy emerged over a highlights video from last week’s Red Bull Flugtag competition, in which participants send whimsical “flying” machines crashing off a ramp into water.

Of course it’s not an expression of racism. The situation was absolutely friendly and happy Vadim Shevchenko, Red Bull spokesman

In the video, at least four shirtless men who appeared to be in blackface makeup, and one dressed as the US president, chased another dressed as a banana.

The banana footage immediately sparked criticism from anti-discrimination activists. Robert Ustian, a supporter of the Russian football club CSKA and founder of the group CSKA Fans Against Racism, first spotted the video and said it showed that Russians often don’t understand the hurtfulness of their actions.

“They think this is funny, that this video with Obama and black people chasing a banana is funny,” said Ustian. “It shows that there’s an issue with racism in our society that is not being raised.”

Photoshopped memes showing Obama with bananas and calling the US president a monkey have appeared frequently on the Russian internet, including on a site of images often used by paid pro-Kremlin trolls.

Intolerant fans have also wielded bananas at football matches. In 2011, a fan of the St Petersburg football team Zenit waved a banana at Roberto Carlos, who was then playing for the Russian side Anzhi Makhachkala, as he walked down the tunnel. At another match, spectators threw a banana on the pitch in the direction of the Brazilian fullback.

Vadim Shevchenko, a member of Red Bull’s communications department, denied that the footage was meant to be racist and said the banana chase had not been planned. He said the man in the Obama costume had been part of a team called Dollar Goodbye alongside Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping impersonators, while the banana was from a different team called Crazy Tea Drinking.

A Red Bull photograph from the Moscow event showed people painted black pushing a flying machine resembling a white sheep off the ramp.

A participant falls down during the Red Bull Flugtag competition in Moscow. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

“Of course it’s not an expression of racism,” Shevchenko said. “If you had been there you would understand. The situation was absolutely friendly and happy.”

Red Bull had removed the video from its site later on Friday afternoon.

The video comes as Russia, which will host the World Cup in 2018, faces criticism for its unimpressive track record on racism. Fifa has recently called on Russia to tackle discrimination in football after a string of fan incidents. Officials including the sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, have responded that racism in football is a problem everywhere, not just in Russia.

Earlier in July, the Ghanaian midfielder Emmanuel Frimpong, who plays for the Russian club Ufa, was banned for two games after swearing at fans making racist chants at him. The opposing club was not punished in a decision that Frimpong called “beyond a joke”.

The Brazilian striker Hulk, who plays for Zenit, later said that he encounters racism in almost every game he plays in Russia.

A report by the Fare network and the Moscow-based Sova Centre, which study discrimination, found 99 racist and far-right displays and 21 racially motivated attacks by Russian football fans during the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons.

Red Bull said in a statement to the Guardian on Saturday that they did not mean to provide a venue for offensive expressions and would take “more effective measures to prevent such incidents”.

“The Red Bull Flugtag organisers in Russia regret that they did not anticipate a situation in which participants could create a negative subtext to a traditionally fun and eagerly awaited show,” the statement said.

• This article was amended on 1 August 2015 to include a response from Red Bull.