Memes Playing Increasingly Important Role in Russian Discussions about Putin’s War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 30 – Memes are playing an increasingly important role in Russian discussions about Putin’s war in Ukraine not only because the Kremlin has made the open discussion of that conflict difficult but because memes offered by one side in the debate can be transformed ironically into memes reflecting the views of their opponents.

            The Moscow Times has now compiled a list of some of the most important of these memes and discussed their transformation in ways that their original authors certainly did not intend (themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/30/inside-the-dark-humor-of-russias-wartime-memes-a91814).

            Perhaps the most notable of these memes, the paper suggests, was Goida! An archaic Russian battle cry that a pro-Kremlin actor used in a September 2022 speech. His words were directed at those supporting the war, but opponents of the Kremlin picked it up and “repurposed it as a sarcastic punchline,” often posting it “under news of Russia’s failures and setbacks.”

            “A related meme, ‘Goooa! The paper suggests “comes from a cartoon in which a bear mistakenly celebrates a card game against Uncle Sam,” mocking ‘pro-war celebrations or political theater. Both expressions are also often deployed out of context as absurdist punchlines.”

            Another meme used by both sides in this debate is “our elephant,” used by Kremlin supporters to express respect for those abroad who support Russia and by Kremlin opponents as an ironic reference to “the Soviet-era joke that mocked the USSR’s tendency to exaggerate its achievements” as when it claimed that “’Russia is the homeland of elephants.’”

            Other memes which have undergone a similar evolution are SVO, the abbreviation of “special military operation” as the Kremlin calls its war, MAX, the name of the Kremlin-promoted internet app, Ukraine’s supposed plan to attack Belarus, and Prigozhin’s statement that he had 25,000 supporters who would “soon sort things out.”

            Because irony is more easily denied than most other forms of speech, Russians can use this in ways that are not as likely to land them in trouble with the authorities. But because of this trend with memes, sorting out who is who as far as the debate on the war is concerned has become far more difficult.