On February 24, 2022, Russia has begun its full-scaled invasion of Ukraine. We have been fighting ever since.

Humor is what helps us to stay strong and carry on.

This project is developed by Media Center Ukraine and is aimed to preserve the most important memes of this war.

  • Event:
    Ministry of Defense of Ukraine introduced their avatar
  • Meme:
    Bavovnyatko
  • Meme’s history:

    Twitter account of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine created a virtual character based on a cotton flower: Bavovnyatko. Cotton is called bavovna in Ukrainian and the suffix -atko/-yatko is used to make words for small nice things: bavovnyatko would be a little nice piece of cotton.

    Or, some nice explosions on enemy's territory.

    Why cotton (or bavovna)?

    Russian media use euphemisms for explosions in their country. They call explosions "khlopOk" (stress on the 2nd syllable) meaning ‘pop’, ‘clap’, ‘crack’, ‘bang’.

    However, when the first syllable is stressed, “khlOpok” means “cotton” in English (“Bavovna” in Ukrainian)

    When Russian bots and trolls put “khlopok” into Google translate in order to fake being Ukrainian they got “bavovna” instead. So it became obvious that they were Russian propaganda bots.

  • Creator:

    Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

  • Tags: