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In the Soviet era, a good joke was as perilous as an openly anti-Communist statement – people were sentenced to jail or even death for ridiculing Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Lukashenko is a close ally of Putin and he was apparently joking with him. A video showed Putin smiling at the comments. Historically, our lives have been difficult, so we constantly make jokes to stay sane,” Sofiya Maksymiv tells Al Jazeera. The communications coordinator at the online publication UkraineWorld has written about Ukrainian wartime jesting. “It’s our national trait; we choose to see things through a comic lens. That makes it easier to live through drastic situations.” Entire genres of underground jokes that made fun of Communist leaders and all walks of Soviet life emerged – and were later compiled into voluminous anthologies.
The worst-hit areas are those immediately downstream from the dam. Some of them are under Russian control, on the eastern shore of the Dnieper. A Ukrainian military spokesperson suggested Russia had lost many of its own defensive positions, forcing it to retreat to a second line of defence 5-15km away. There is definitely an element of privilege and safety behind the impulse to meme instead of staying glued to the news. Part of the meme response is about “not realizing what war really is and what it means,” Alhabash said. “So, dealing with it in a laissez-faire kind of way.”So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)
Zagaikevich founded Underground Standup Club in 2015, and Lipko and Dierskaia (who are life partners) have been regulars at the club for most of its seven years. In the months prior to the war, they hosted That’s the News live and in person, and now they produce the YouTube version from various parts of Ukraine. Dierskaia left Kyiv in late February to find a safer place to stay, but Zagaikevich and Lipko remain in Ukraine’s capital, a current target of artillery strikes. British military intelligence suggests Russia's air force has "likely started" using the RBK-500 500kg cluster munition bomb more frequently. Two years later, when Britain alleged that Russia had poisoned a former spy and his daughter, the Russian embassy in London posted a picture of Hercule Poirot, the detective in Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. The caption read, “In absence of evidence, we definitely need Poirot in Salisbury!” Dozens more jokes, memes, tweets and YouTube sketches have emerged ridiculing Russians and their President Vladimir Putin, lauding Ukrainian servicemen and lambasting NATO and the European Union for not providing enough help.Dark humour, which is described by many researchers as a kind of coping mechanism by people in extreme distress,has become a part of how we communicate on social media. The agreement would forbid them from criticising official policy, discrediting Soviet military history or contravening traditional family values. All of the comedians I watched that night, and all those I’ve spoken with since the invasion, told me about the cathartic effect of comedy, of laughter, in such depressing times. “A stand-up night in a basement is a good way to get people to ignore air-raid sirens, come to a shelter, and spend a couple hours in a safe space,” Zagaikevich told me. “A good joke is the best way to reduce stress and fuel your fighting spirit. There’s no better way to cope with all the horror of our day-to-day news.”
However, since 2014, Russian propagandists have used the imagined persecution of Russian speakers in Ukraine as justification for Russia’s aggression. In reality, while Ukrainian was promoted to the status of official language as part of Leninopad, Russian is so accepted in Ukraine that Zelensky broke into Russian during the 2019 presidential debate to the cheers of the crowd. This dark joke refers to the terror that follows when Russian soldiers come to “save” Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
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This is a popular meme circulating in Ukraine since the war erupted. ‘Are you one of the Avengers?’ ‘No, I am from the Ukraine Post’ reads this exchange in a popular meme Call for more air defense: Ukraine has been struggling in the past week to repel a wave of Russian strikes against Odesa, its air defenses unable to cope with the types of missiles that Moscow has used to pummel the region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his call for a "sky shield" provided by partners. Meanwhile, fighting has not ceased in the east. In messages published between June 5th and 7th, Ms Maliar, playing down other developments, said that Bakhmut was still the “epicentre of hostilities”. Ukraine was advancing on a “fairly broad front” there, she claimed, as much as 1.1km in places, capturing the commanding heights around the town. There was also fighting towards Soledar, to its north, suggesting that Ukraine might hope to encircle Bakhmut. Recapturing the town would erase Russia’s sole substantial gain of the past year. A bigger push in the surrounding Donbas region would also allow Ukraine to recapture territory it lost in 2014. That would be a humiliation for Russia, and undercut its stated rationale for the war—the “liberation” of the east. Unto the breach When God created Eastern Europe, he carved from the earth three hulking nations: a dull gray valley called Germany, an endless white tundra called Russia, and, between the two, a bursting field of yellow flowers called Ukraine. Vincent Miller of Kent university in the UK, author of "Understanding Digital Culture", sees memes as a kind of conversation that can enable political debate to flourish.
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