Almost every major military victory for Ukraine in the war with Russia has been greeted with cheers by Ukrainians and their supporters, who post memes of celebration on social media.
The important bridge across the Kerch Strait, which connects the Crimean peninsula with Russia, was damaged by an explosion on Saturday morning.
The bridge is important for both practical and symbolic reasons. It is a key supply line for Russian forces in the south of the country and is also a personal project of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Hours after the explosion, several Ukrainian government agencies posted memes or jokes on social media to celebrate, mock or insinuate who might have done it.
One of them was the National Railway Service of Ukraine, which posted a photo on Twitter of the burning railway on the Kerch Strait Bridge. “No smoking on trains!” the service tweeted, supporting the message with a winking emoji.
Dozens of photoshopped photos show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cooking kebabs over flames coming from the bridge. Others poked fun at the situation by placing Game of Thrones characters next to photos of the damage, or by saying that traditional Russian sandals made from birch bark could be used as flippers for swimming across the Kerch Strait.
Ukrainian Post quickly made a fake stamp that looked like the bridge from a scene from the movie Titanic. One Ukrainian bank, Monobank, changed the picture on its virtual mobile bank cards to show the burnt train and the broken surface of the Crimean bridge. until noon more than 300,000 people had already downloaded it.
The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, posted a video of the damage along with a video of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” which was a reference to Putin’s birthday the day before. Tens of thousands of people liked and shared the post.
People were happy on social media because it reminded them of other important moments since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, such as when the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva, was sunk.
Having bombed Snake Island, a Ukrainian territory in the Black Sea, early in the war, this ship was a major target of Ukrainian anger. When the Moscow sinks, people who don’t like the Kremlin like to joke that the ship has been turned into a submarine.
Since the Russian invasion, Ukrainians have often used social media to unite. Tens of thousands of images have been shared in Telegram channels and other forums.
The memes also helped raise a lot of money for the Ukrainian country by reinforcing and commercializing the public image of a brave country that managed to stop a superpower from taking over.
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