Inside Ukraine's meme-filled Twitter account

War in 2022 in the social media age is an odd affair.

Misinformation spreads quickly, people have access to more on the ground footage than ever before, and memes become bullets in battles of ideas.

Nothing encapsulates this truth more than Ukraine's official Twitter account which has over the last few years sustained a steady drip-feed of anti-Russia content.

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While the account posts tweets you might expect from a country's official feed like anniversaries of historical events, photos of places in the country, every so often they slap memes down mocking Russian president Vladimir Putin, making light of tensions between the two countries, and denouncing "appeasement" strategies.

This has only increased in the last week after Russia invaded Ukraine and warned the west not to respond.

Here's some examples:

Twitter/ @Ukraine

Twitter/ @Ukraine

Twitter/ @Ukraine

Twitter

Twitter

After this tweet was posted last week, the account added: “This is not a ‘meme’, but our and your reality right now.”

Who runs it?

The account is run by a trio - Yarema Dukh, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko’s press attaché, Oleg Naumenko, who helped build the Ukrainian government’s communications team before joining the private sector, and Artem Zhukov, who coordinates strategic digital communications for the presidential administration.

The group were interviewed by Yahoo in 2017 about why they do what they do. "Ukrainians are extremely open-minded and friendly nation with a great sense of humour. Twitter is just the mirror,” Zhukov said.

“It’s a good opportunity for international interaction,” Dukh added. “Not necessarily to settle beef with Russia, but to have a nice exchange with friendly countries like Poland, Israel, Canada or Lithuania—we’re happy to have some banter and to raise a glass of e-wine!"

As the war in Ukraine continues, we'll likely see more content come out of the Twitter account.

Whether it ruffles Putin's feathers or just provides social media users with a bit of light relief is another question.

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