First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Well, yes and no. There’s no single satisfactory response to a war. It’s okay to feel how you feel, however messy or improper your feelings are — and that’s always been true. What’s new, this time, is that the Ukrainian invasion is unfolding in the context of the modern internet. Social media gamifies public discourse, dividing conversations into winners and losers in a way that’s simply impossible to reconcile with the myriad emotions that accompany the possibility of an actual global military conflict. It was during this period, in Nazar’s view, that a modern, specifically Ukrainian consciousness spread across the country, and, consequently, there was a rapid rise in jokes that were less Soviet or generally Slavic and more distinctly Ukrainian. The inability of DoD personnel to visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored significantly hampered ODC-Kyiv’s ability to execute” the monitoring, the report added.Speaking last week, Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat explained that the speed and trajectory of the Oniks and Kh-22 missiles make them very hard to intercept. The air force reportedly used the bombs against Ukrainian forces around Vuhledar and Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region, the British Ministry of Defence said.

The defense minister said he thought, optimistically, pilots could be operating F-16s in the skies of Ukraine by spring of next year. At the other end of the front, in the south, on the Russians’ left flank, the most dramatic development came on June 6th when the Kakhovka dam collapsed, causing massive flooding across Kherson province. It is too early to assess the full damage. Yury Vaskov, Ukraine’s deputy minister for infrastructure, suggested on June 7th to The Economist that more of the dam may be intact than initially thought. Working out how much is left will be clear only once the water level falls. But already more than 150 tonnes of oil have leaked into the Dnieper. “We already know it is the most terrible catastrophe Ukraine has experienced in decades,” Mr Vaskov said. The basic idea here, as Alhabash pointed out, is that the war meme itself isn’t just about war. It’s about the larger cultural mood and the ways in which we receive, express, and amplify that mood. In the past, the memes might have functioned as a kind of canary in the coal mine for a larger social media response to future emergent political situations. Short ukrainian puns are one of the best ways to have fun with word play in English. The ukrainian humour may include short soviet jokes also. 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.)A foreigner entering Russia would be prohibited from "interfering with the activities of public authorities of the Russian Federation, discrediting in any form the foreign and domestic state policy of the Russian Federation, public authorities and their officials", TASS said. On Friday, Putin, without providing any proof, accused Poland of wanting to annex parts of Belarus, saying any aggression would be met with "all the means at our disposal." According to the report, which examined the period of February-September 2022, the Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv “was unable to conduct required (end-use monitoring) of military equipment that the United States provided to Ukraine in FY 2022.” Alhabash’s research indicates that people who share memes often aren’t thinking too deeply about what to post or share, and are “driven to make content based on what we think other people want to see on social media.” This can be a very knee-jerk experience, which doesn’t really lend itself to reflective war memes. What gives the show most of its structure are news stories about Russian occupying forces suffering losses in Ukraine. For example, during one stream, the comedians discussed Ukrainian farmers stealing Russian tanks. They share urban legends, too, like the one about a Ukrainian babushka who invites Russian soldiers to tea, only to poison them. “These people came to our land with a mission to kill us. They’re murdering innocent people, striking churches and hospitals. So I don’t worry about offending some guy in Russia,” says Lipko. The tone of this portion of the show can get dark, but the comedians insist it’s a natural part of coping with wartime. “That’s one way to feel this unity in the face of an enemy now: if they laugh, that means they’re not afraid,” Zagaikevich says.

Ms Hrabovetska said memes and jokes were helping keep Ukrainians' morale high as authorities call for civilians to be part of the resistance. But our sense of humor is dark—it has to be, given what we’ve been through. We laugh when Russian soldiers accidentally detonate their own mines. We laugh at Chechen fighters filming TikToks in our destroyed city of Mariupol, only to be killed by Ukrainian snipers. We laugh at Russian propaganda that claims we train birds to identify Russians and infect them with diseases we’ve created in our U.S.-sponsored biolabs. “Ukrainian soldiers say the Russian invaders are brainless,” Sviat Zagaikevich, another comedian who performed on the night I went to the comedy club, said, “because a bullet goes in one ear, and comes out the other.” Pizda (пизда): Cunt. Another core Slavic insult, although it has ancient Indo-European roots, if that helps. 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.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.” Second rabbit: “Haven’t you heard? There’s a rumour going round that all camels are to be castrated.” No-one told me it would be the last one. If I had known that I would have come with my whole family.” Keep reading list of 4 items list 1 of 4 Ukraine says wife of military spy chief was poisoned list 2 of 4 Baltic foreign ministers pull out of OSCE summit over Russia invite list 3 of 4 NATO chief urges allies to ‘stay the course’ in supporting Ukraine list 4 of 4 Ukraine storm death toll rises to 10, thousands rescued in the south end of list

Another particularly barbed tweet sported a Captcha mosaic of the burned-out planes with instructions to “Prove that you’re not a robot.”I’m already seeing the scolding tweets about WWIII jokes. We may be irony-poisoned on here, but you can’t stop gallows humor when it’s something this huge and bleak and we’re all individually powerless. It’s a sign we’re still human.— AICN Podcast Day! (@LazlosGhost) February 24, 2022 We've been reporting this week on extreme weather in Ukraine - and it appears to be slowing down Russia's offensive operations.