“Crimea Is Ours!” Russian geopolitics and digital irony

The image represents Russian military equipment stationed in Crimea and traditionally sporting endearing adjectives as names, such as the battleships Dobryi (Kind) and Zabotlivyi (Careful), the tank Nezhnyi (Tender), the Armored Personnel Carrier Laskovyi (Caressing), and the radar Vnimatel’nyi (Attentive). The tongue-in-cheek (stiob ) representation of the annexation of Crimea is the “ house style” of the pro-government © RIA Novosti and Vitalii Podvitskii http://ria.ru/caricature/20140917/1024499638.html.

Figure 2. Spoiled game.

A popular caricature from Vkontakte shows Barack Obama playing a card game over the map of Crimea. In despair, he sees that his game is spoiled by the trump card depicting Putin with a Kalashnikov machine gun (Figure 3 ). Here, the will and agency of Ukraine and Crimea are manifestly ignored, as very plain, insignificant cards in the geopolitical card party.
Artist: Vitalii Podvitskii.

Figure 3. Inscription: “Darling, you may think whatever you want, but I am returning to my ex.”

The conspicuous absence of Ukraine from the “ big picture” of the annexation of Crimea reenacted a sort of post-neo-colonial denigration of Ukraine, whose history, culture, and political subjectivity are being ridiculed and rejected, often against the backdrop of blatantly sexual imagery (Wolff 1994). The salient example is verbal and visual depiction of Ukraine as a degraded woman having wild group sex with rascals; i.e. the US, the EU, and others. As a political caricature shows, Crimea, pictured as the unlucky husband of Ukraine, angrily leaves Ukraine for Russia.
Artist: Vitalii Podvitskii.