"UKRAINE": a tragicomedy in five acts
ACT I
USA:
Russia is bad.
Stop Nord Stream.
Don't buy Russian natural gas.
Buy instead our liquefied natural gas.
EUROPE (MERKEL):
Russia is not so bad.
Our economic relations go back centuries!
Russian natural gas is cheap.
Russia is good for our economy.
American liquefied natural gas is expensive!
We are not your vassals!
We are not idiots!
ACT II
USA (BIDEN):
NATO will expand into Ukraine!
RUSSIA:
That is a threat to our security interests. If you do that, we would be left with no choice but to take military action in Ukraine to stop NATO expansion.
USA (BIDEN):
Nothing will stop NATO expansion into Ukraine.
It's irreversible!
RUSSIA:
We are commencing a special military operation in Ukraine, with a relatively modest force of approximately 170,000 troops (compared to 1.5 million troops used by Germany to invade Poland), to
(i) stop NATO expansion into Ukraine and
(ii) protect the Russian-ethnic and Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the four eastern oblasts of Ukraine from
(a) continuing to be killed in the civil war by both armed paramilitary groups with historical ties to the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian government itself, which civil war was started by the 2014 US-supported coup d'etat that overthrew a democratically-elected president and
(b) being unjustly discriminated against by the ultra-nationalist Francisco Franco-like policies of Poroshenko and his successor Zelenskyy that weaponize language, culture, and religion in such a manner that they would be deemed unlawful under the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Act III
USA (BIDEN):
Look, Europe!
Russia invaded Ukraine.
Unprovoked! Full-scale invasion! Imperialism!
We told you!
Russia is bad.
EUROPE:
OMG!
Russia invaded Ukraine!
Russia is bad!
Who's next, Poland?😱
Buy US weapons!
Stop Nord Stream!
Sanction Russian natural gas!
LNG!
ACT IV
USA (BIDEN):
Thanks, Europe!
But, peace talks in Istanbul failed.
This war will last forever.
Buy more weapons!
Buy more LNG!
Sanction everything Russian!
Sanction everything Chinese!
Russia is really bad!
Best friends forever, Europe!😘
EUROPE:
Whatever you say, USA!
Russia is really bad!
Censor anybody who does not follow this narrative.
Reject any election where our anti-Russian candidate loses!
BFF, USA! 🥰
ACT V
USA (TRUMP):
Russia is not so bad.
War is bad, and so is de facto dictator Zelenskyy.
Why did you do nothing to stop the war?
Stop censoring!
Free speech is supposed to be a shared value!
Stop overturning elections!
Democracy is supposed to be a shared value!
Make America Great Again, not war!
But, if you are still our BFF, prove it!🧐
Buy more weapons!
Buy more LNG!
America First!
EUROPE:
Emergency meeting in Paris!
This is a disaster!
Look in the mirror, everybody!
We cut off our nose to spite our face!
Our citizens will revolt if they discover the truth!
Think!
What would the IngSoc party do?🤔
Check the 1984 instruction manual!🤓
"War is peace!"
"Freedom is slavery to NATO!"
"Ignorance of the truth is strength!"
Buy more weapons!
Buy more LNG!
Buy more blue and yellow outfits!
Raise the Ukrainian flag over Brussels!
Ukraine First!
Long live, Zelenskyy!😍
THEATER MANAGER:
Lower the curtains!
Thank you, everyone, for attending!
You've been our best audience ever!
Never had we had one so ..., what's the word?
Placid.
Oh, one little public announcement before I go, just to save everyone the trouble of asking: the back of your tickets—immediately under the 6-point clause mandating arbitration of any dispute in Montana by a panel of three members randomly selected from a pool of experts gainfully employed by Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, and/or General Dynamics—clearly states in Ukrainian and 5-point font that the tickets are nonrefundable.
слава абсурду!
Slava absurdu!
EUROPEAN AUDIENCE:
WTF?
That play made no sense.
Who's the playwright?
Beckett, Ionesco, Sartre, Blinken, Hochstein ...?
Why didn't the critics warn us?🤬
Why is our electricity so expensive?
Where did our healthcare, education, and pensions go?
What the hell happened to Germany's economy?
Why are there so many dead Ukrainians?
What the hell are we going to do with all these weapons?
You can't eat a bullet. You can't raise a family in a tank.