“Early in the morning of February 24, I woke up because my father, a military man, called me. He said that the war had started. I went to bed until the 9th, and then I realized that the war had really started.”

This is an excerpt from the performance of Ukrainian stand-up comedian Felix Redka. He jokes in a bomb shelter while his father fights against Russia in the Donbass.

Paradoxically, in a country where the president is a comedian, the Ukrainian humor industry has long been more focused on its eastern neighbor, Russia. Clear language and partly common themes for jokes led to the fact that Russian stand-up artists were better known in Ukraine even than domestic ones. They actively toured Ukrainian cities.

Many humorous TV formats, including those created by the production studio of incumbent President Volodymyr Zelensky “95 Quarter”, were exported to Russia and had high ratings there.

The war changed everything. While the Russian military fires rockets at Ukrainian cities, residents of these cities are sitting in bomb shelters and ridiculing the incompetence of their enemies.

At the same time, multimillion-dollar “Internet troops” fill social networks with humorous pictures – memes. They ridicule how Ukrainian fighting geese attack the Kremlin, and Russian soldiers steal washing machines and toilets from Ukrainians.

Destroying the enemy with humor is not an invention of Ukraine.

These weapons were once used by the United States and the Soviet Union during World War II.

There is a commotion on the farm. Animals smoke cigars and watch in amazement as a black egg hatches with a cry of “Zig Heil!” a duck that looks like Hitler. She puts up images of the swastika everywhere, gives passionate speeches to other inhabitants of the farm and gathers an army of assault ducks.

Hitler’s duck with his Italian and Japanese bird allies is finally defeated by the dove of peace they have offended.

This is a 1942 American cartoon called “Ducktators” (a play on the English words “duck” – “duck” and “diktators” – “dictators”) from the animation studio Warner Brothers.

The release of such satirical propaganda cartoons in the United States during World War II became widespread.

Famous cartoon characters – Duffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and even Mickey Mouse – fought the Nazis, helped the US military and called for the purchase of military bonds. Opponents of cartoon characters have always been clumsy, funny and always lost in the end.

Charlie Chaplin started making fun of his opponent in the movies. His “Great Dictator” was released in the fall of 1940, more than a year before the United States entered World War II.

The American comedian in his picture created a recognizable parody of Hitler. His character Adenoid Hinkel is a dictator who dreams of capturing a neighboring country and exterminating all Jews.

He constantly gets into funny situations, and in the finale, a similar Jewish hairdresser accidentally becomes a dictator instead.

The film caused a sensation both in America and in Europe, which by then had already felt Hitler’s aggressive plans. “The Great Dictator” won five Oscars and became a film classic.

Ridicule of the enemy became a common technique during World War II. In addition to humiliating the enemy and raising the morale of the troops, it was also used for educational purposes, for example, to teach weapons skills.

Britain has launched a special German Air Force service, which broadcasts satirical radio programs every week. They allegedly ridiculed the absurdity of life in Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler himself on behalf of a young German officer or a Berlin housewife.

The Soviet Union also produced several radio programs and animated films that were used as propaganda against the enemy. But they were not so popular among the population, did not have a satirical basis and recognizable characters. The efforts of Soviet artists focused on creating posters and caricatures of the Nazis and Nazis. It was often ridiculed Hitler’s appearance and his manner of speaking.

The new war in Europe has again reminded us of the importance of “humorous weapons” and their visual power.

Ukrainians quickly got used to it and mastered the main element of modern Internet folklore – memes.

This is usually a picture with a short phrase or a simple picture that mocks an event or character using well-known and common symbols. Such humor is quite harsh or even “black”.

For example, after the invasion began in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook and Telegram began to spread memes about the destruction of Russian equipment, in particular, the cruiser “Moscow”, hiding Russia’s military losses and theft of household appliances.

The heroes of the Ukrainian Internet epic were Bayraktar drones and Javelin missile systems, and the phrase of the border guards “Russian ship go nah ..”, said to the invaders on the island of Snake, has become popular.

The advantage of such humor is its accessibility. Any user on the Internet who has a sense of humor and basic skills in Photoshop can make a successful meme in a couple of minutes.

And then with a sense of duty and with pleasure to watch as his work is gaining likes and shares from the audience.

Some have been able to launch this process on an industrial scale. For example, Rivne DJ and musician Micik Gonibez, aka Mikhail Yurchuk, has created a Facebook community Goni Memes, where new memes about the Russian military appear almost daily.

Many pictures are also about “cotton” or “cotton” (on Russian television the word “cotton” is used instead of “explosion”) in the shelled Belgorod and about the duo of Russian and Belarusian presidents.

Memes about the Russian soldier Chmon and the boastful leader of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov are popular in the Ukrainian Internet audience.

“I have a higher art education, but memes are not about drawing, but about emotions,” Mykhailo Yurchuk told BBC News Ukraine. “These pictures should evoke a certain emotional flashback in people.”

He recalls that he began to do this for himself to reflect his own reaction to a social event. Later, thousands of people who liked the author’s harsh humor began to subscribe to the Facebook page.

According to Mykhailo, Ukrainians have always had a good time with political humor, and now it has simply been reformatted into a military one. “Humor and laughter is a psychological relief. That is, you growl and continue to do your thing. Well, besides, it is, of course, humiliation of the enemy. Fear of him decreases when you laugh at him,” – said the humorist.

He is convinced that such a hobby does not interfere much with his main job.

“If the meme is made for more than five minutes, it will not be very funny,” – reveals the secret of the craft MC Gonibes.

This joke of 24-year-old stand-up comedian Felix Radka causes laughter and applause from the audience.

The venue of the stand is quite unusual – it is a dirty and dark bomb shelter in the native Sumy.

Circumstances are also extraordinary: behind the doors of the shelter – the beginning of March 2022, the city of Sumy is stormed and shelled by Russian aircraft and artillery. Spectators of the concert are ordinary residents of the city, who are hiding in a shelter during an air raid.

The pioneer of such an extreme standup is Felix Redka, a thin, short guy with round glasses who jokes about the war, the Russian military and his father, who is currently at war with the enemy. This is the topic that most appeals to the public, he says.

“The audience reacts best when they are told something personal and unique from the stage. And I think it should be difficult to tell about it, but I explain it to myself in such a way that this is a comedic view of the world. That is, you perceive all your difficulties humor. This is probably a protective reaction of the psyche – to laugh at difficult questions, “- says Felix.

According to him, the father, who signed a contract with the Armed Forces and serves at the front, welcomes his son’s humorous speeches, but his mother does not.

She was worried that the Russian military might find out from her son’s YouTube concert that she was the wife of a military officer. Felix perceives this situation philosophically: “Apparently, this is the Ukrainian soul, that we can’t just keep quiet when we want to say something. At that moment, as a comedian, I wanted to tell everything what I think.”

In a month and a half, his standup has gained more than 500,000 views on YouTube, which is a very high result for domestic comedians. Following Felix Redka, they also began to take an active part in bomb shelters and in fact made it a feature of modern Ukrainian stand-up comedy.

They are actively occupying a niche created by Russian comedians, says Felix. Almost none of them have publicly condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Some, such as the popular comedian Nurlan Saburov, tried to explain their silence by fear for their family in Russia, but only got worse.

“We created a humorous vacuum, it was filled by our comedians. So to speak, there was import substitution,” – says Redka.

He asks not to overestimate the importance of the “humorous front” during the war, but not to neglect it.

“We don’t have many reasons to just laugh at this difficult time,” the humorist adds seriously.

This is an excerpt from the stand of the famous Ukrainian comedian Anton Tymoshenko. He tells his humorous material in English for the first time, before Anton spoke in Russian and Ukrainian.

After the war began, everything changed, he says. In the first weeks, the stand-up comedian did not understand at all whether it made sense to continue doing this. Tymoshenko posted some jokes on her social networks, and only when she saw the positive feedback from subscribers did she realize that society had a demand for humor during the war.

At the same time, Anton notes, he decided not to “hype” on this topic, but to send part of the ticket proceeds to the Armed Forces. In fact, he recorded the stand-up in English in order to reach a foreign audience and encourage them to send donations to the Ukrainian army.

“Many people wrote to me that thanks to this standup they became more interested in the events in Ukraine. Because this information was conveyed to them in an easy way,” says Anton.

The comedian admits that he edits his material a lot before going on stage. This is especially true of jokes about the Ukrainian military.

Ukrainian stand-up comedian Oleh Grundyk recently had to publicly apologize for a reckless joke on the subject.

He joked during the concert that their families will be able to spend multimillion-dollar payments for the dead of the Armed Forces only on books, cinemas and gyms. This is a hint of such restrictions on coronavirus vaccination payments.

Anton Tymoshenko says that his colleague’s joke is really inappropriate, it should not have been said from the stage. He himself is trying to filter such content.

“My internal editor is filtering this out. If I have a joke about our military, and especially about our Troo (Terroborona, – Ed.), Which sits in Ternopil and asks for 100 thermal imagers, I’m not joking about it publicly. I understand that the Russians can use it in the information war, “Tymoshenko explains.

Accordingly, the stand-up comedian tries not to take risks and, as he himself says, to work more on the “anti-Russian theme”, ie to ridicule the incompetence of Russian citizens. Jokes about the enemy always make the audience laugh.

“When you laugh at the enemy, it’s much better than being afraid of him,” he concludes.

Anton’s most questionable question was whether to insert his most “black” joke about the Ukrainian war into an English-language concert. It talks about how many Ukrainian children must be raped by the Russian military in order for the European Union to impose one or another package of sanctions against Russia.

The comedian inserted this joke into the program, the audience, he said, understood everything and did not condemn the artist for “black” humor.

Anton Tymoshenko jokes on the stage of the Kiev bomb shelter in April 2022 and immediately apologizes to the audience: “hard times – hard jokes.”

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