Jokes and offbeat auctions for the troops: Stand-up comedy sweeps Ukraine

Kyiv, Ukraine — Onstage in a Kyiv theater, Anton Tymoshenko tells a joke about Ukrainians who are never satisfied with the weapons their country gets from the West — if they got nuclear weapons, he says, they would probably grumble about the quality of the uranium. He mocks the Odesa mayor (for being allegedly pro-Russian) and the Kyiv one (for being allegedly pro-himself).

Then Tymoshenko turns his attention to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, once a comedian, and his speeches aimed at rallying the Ukrainian people that he has broadcast daily since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

“Who still watches Zelenskyy’s videos? Please applaud,” Tymoshenko asks his audience. A few clap, with little enthusiasm. “Every day, there’s a new one. And you don’t watch them. Neither do I.” He adds, “The first season was great, but now ...” He pauses for comic effect. “Maybe he should just rerun old episodes.”

Being a comedian during a war might seem a bit like being a clown at a funeral. But the crowd laughs.

In the third year of the full-scale war with Russia, stand-up comedy, relatively new to Ukraine, is having a moment. Tymoshenko, 30, is one of a new crop of stand-up comics trying to make people laugh even as Russian missiles slam into Ukrainian cities.

The comedians have performed in the war-ravaged city of Kharkiv; for troops near the front lines in the east; and in the capital, Kyiv, in venues including a bomb shelter and an outdoor stage of a high-rise shopping mall.

In a somewhat absurdist twist, stand-up comics are also now seen as important to the war effort by raising millions of dollars for the army through ticket sales and auctions at the end of their shows — some of which they perform in Europe or North America — that they turn into part of their comedy acts.

They have auctioned off things as improbable as an empty Ukrainian grocery bag, a bit of stage lint, stolen maple syrup from Canada, a packaged Russian military meal, key chains made of downed Russian missiles, and a jar of honey made by the bees of a former Ukrainian president. (The honey alone went for more than $1,100.)

Tymoshenko said in an interview that he had raised almost $300,000 during a recent tour in the United States and Canada. Another Ukrainian comedian, Vasyl Baidak, said he had raised $277,000 during a three-week European tour. Those numbers could not be independently verified.

Like other stand-up comics in Ukraine, they say they donate their proceeds to Ukrainian brigades to buy things like drones, drone-defense systems and body armor.

“Everything can be sold, including a sock,” said Serhiy Chyrkov, another stand-up comic.

Dark humor is sometimes the best way to get through difficult times, build a sense of community and improve morale, as any military veteran knows.

“It’s about what we live in, this crisis,” said Zoya Melnyk, sitting in the audience before Tymoshenko’s recent show. “It’s about funny things we don’t notice at first.”

Stand-up comedy is a recent Ukrainian import. In the Soviet Union, comedians faced censorship and performed vetted material, or risked reprisal.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence in 1991, comedy remained pretty stale, mostly censored, driven by Moscow’s tastes and performed largely in Russian.

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Comedy troupes, including one led by Zelenskyy, eventually gained popularity in Russia, mainly performing skits, and not stand-up comedy. Zelenskyy eventually became a comedy star in Ukraine, culminating in his role in the TV show “Servant of the People” as a history teacher who accidentally becomes the Ukrainian president. And then, in a dramatic real-life turn that few saw coming, he parlayed that show into an actual successful run for president.

The first official Ukrainian stand-up show opened in Kyiv in about 2012, said Baidak, who has studied the history of comedy in Ukraine. A year later, there was a stand-up show in Kharkiv, then one in Lviv.

Stand-up comics said in interviews they were inspired by watching performances on YouTube by comedians like American Doug Stanhope — whom they really, really want to perform in Ukraine. (Stanhope, who was himself unsure why he’d taken off in Ukraine, specifically, said he was open to visiting Kyiv this fall. “In my life, everything sounds boring, except for this,” he said in an interview.<em>)</em>

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The war changed things in Ukraine. Many comics wrestle with the sometimes uncomfortable fact that they are not fighting on the front lines, although they are eligible for the military draft. Some enlisted — including Chyrkov, who joined the army in September.

Stand-up comedy itself has become more serious, more intentional. For a profession founded on the idea of mocking institutions, many Ukrainian comedians seem downright patriotic, saying they tell jokes to lift Ukrainians’ spirits.

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Baidak, an absurdist comedian, once told jokes about horses and flies. One involved a tornado and a bathroom. Now, he is more grounded in reality.

“I must do jokes about the war because I feel a responsibility,” he said. At the beginning of the invasion, he would not joke about the front lines or explosions. But after going to the front lines, performing, talking to soldiers and hearing explosions for himself, he said, “I just want to tell you what I feel, how it is to be there.”

While most comedians are men, women are also taking the stage.

On a recent Sunday, Anastasiia Zukhvala performed a set outside the high-rise Gulliver shopping mall, riffing on normal nonwar concerns — hating summer heat, being a terrible driver. And, like many of her fellow comedians, she took the opportunity to poke fun at Russians.

In an interview, she said she would not joke about the tragedies in Ukraine. She said that everyone knew the crisis the country faced, adding that she and her fellow comics had “resting Shevchenko face” — a reference to the Ukrainian poet whose droopy mustache and dour expression are featured on busts that are ubiquitous in Ukraine.

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Despite the blossoming of stand-up comedy, the former Soviet republic still wrestles with the ideals of democracy and free speech.

At the Atlas Weekend music and arts festival in July in Kyiv, Chyrkov’s set consisted of reading Zelenskyy’s 2019 election promises verbatim, about ending poverty and nepotism and the fighting with Russia in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. As he spoke, a security guard yanked him off the stage. Festival officials later called the episode an “unfortunate misunderstanding” and blamed an employee for having “a false interpretation of what was happening.”

In an interview, Chyrkov said he had no interest in talking about the Atlas festival and said he believed it was a misunderstanding.

Tymoshenko, however, had some choice words for Atlas at his recent show in Kyiv, saying the festival should “go to hell” for not respecting stand-up. “It’s never happened before, no matter who was onstage,” Tymoshenko told the audience.

At the end of his set, he switched into auctioneer mode, selling off things like a drink with him in his dressing room after the show (raising almost $725); remnants of a Russian infantry fighting vehicle destroyed in the Kyiv suburb of Hostomel in March 2022 (about $1,200); and, somewhat inexplicably, a T-shirt signed by both Andriy Shevchenko, a former Ukrainian soccer star, and American actor Liev Schreiber, who is of Ukrainian descent (about $1,325).

Tymoshenko ended by auctioning off his microphone. “You can remove the mic from me,” he said. “Raise your hand if you are interested.”

A man named Kostya beat out his competitors with an offer of almost $850. It was a lucrative mic drop.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/world/europe/stand-up-comedy-ukraine.html">The New York Times</a>.