Ukranian Comedians Take Stage To Raise Spirits As War Rages. WATCH

Sharing a much-needed laugh as the war rages on, Ukrainian comedians took the stage to raise spirits. News agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) posted a video on Twitter with the caption, “In Ukraine, a country that elected former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky as president, it didn’t take long for the stand-up scene to reboot in the wake of Russia’s invasion.”

🇺🇦 VIDEO: In Ukraine, a country that elected former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky as president, it didn’t take long for the stand-up scene to reboot in the wake of Russia’s invasion. “All my humor is built on my personal experiences” says Maryna Voytsekhovska. pic.twitter.com/O7y8pYQzam

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) Mar 4, 2023

In the video, one of the stand-up comedians is seen saying: “My mom calls and asks ‘where are you?’ She says you need to go down deeper, I asked where she’s hiding (from a Russian strike). She says I am in the village, but the signal is bad… so I have gone up to the attic.”

Further in the video, the person behind this initiative to organize stand-up comedy nights can be seen saying: “It’s what we do to help. We are not fighting with weapons but with our words, with our messages.”

Responding to the human tendency to laugh, a person in the video is then seen commenting on the human tendency to laugh even at “horrible things like war”.

“It’s like part of our society, or normal behavior to laugh, even at horrible things like war,” the person says in the video.

The person behind the initiative, Ivan, said he organizes around twenty comedy nights a month and donates some of the profits to the military, according to the video.

Sharing his experience the organizer said: “We reopened in May 2022 and we didn’t know if people would come or not because there is a war in the country, there’re strikes, and there’re sirens.”

When asked if it was appropriate or not, the organizer said: “It seemed to be the right time, because people need to… not to be distracted, you don’t distract from the war but to show that we are laughing, and therefore, we are not surrendering.”

In the video, another comedian said: “All my humor is built on my personal experiences. I make jokes about what has personally touched me about what has happened to me in my life, and at the moment the war absorbs all our lives. So My jokes also revolve around it.”

The Russia-Ukraine War:

It’s been a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking a crisis that has changed the world. Several attacks have been repulsed in the eastern Donetsk region in the last 24 hours, the BBC reported on Saturday.

Russian forces claim to be on the verge of capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, which has been the site of heavy combat for months.

The head of Russia’s Wagner private army thinks the country is “practically encircled” with few options for escape. According to the city’s deputy mayor, there was street fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces.