This morning, after a long overnight drone strike on Kyiv, I started my day at the conversation club with my students. It's an hour and a half of French practice in small groups at the language school where I teach. The school is called Musique de langue ("Music of Language") and was opened by my friend Olga Shurova in the center of Kyiv, in an early 20^th-century building with very thick walls – a safety criterion nowadays.

At the start of the course, we exchanged a few short jokes about drones, about the russians [Sasha has chosen not to capitalize the word Russian] who ruin our lives, about sleepless nights during bombing raids. It's a kind of ritual of breakfast jokes, as if they had become an indispensable prelude to the start of the day.

Ever since the early days of the great war, I've been convinced that humor is an integral part of the Ukrainian spirit and culture. Funny stories, images on Instagram and videos on YouTube punctuate the conflict to the rhythm of its horrors. Every destruction, every attack has its joke. Sometimes I discover a meme on social media before I'm aware of the event it refers to. So much so that in newspapers, depending on the subject, you can read selections of the best popular jokes.

The famous line from one of our soldiers, Roman Gribov, on Snake Island [in the Black Sea] during the attack on February 24, 2022 ("Russian warship, go fuck yourself") has become one of our great humorous references. It's been used everywhere: in numerous memes, on billboards, in Ukrainian song lyrics. I remember the summer advertising campaign of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, responsible for civil protection. In the image there is a burning ship and this phrase: "Be careful while swimming, you're not a Russian warship."

After a horrific air attack on the small town of Borodyanka, near Kyiv, in April 2022, another symbol has entered our daily lives. In this case, it's an image: that of a building completely gutted by bombing raids, miraculously leaving intact a kitchen cabinet with a decorative rooster sitting on top. From now on, Ukrainians wish themselves "to be like that kitchen cabinet door, which clings on and survives despite everything."

Weapons of war have also become the stars of Ukrainian humor. FGM-148 Javelins (anti-tank missile launchers), Bayraktar TB2s (tactical drones) and M142 Himars (multiple rocket launchers) are everywhere. A Saint Javelin meme, created by Ukrainian-Canadian journalist Christian Borys, depicting a stylized Madonna with a modern weapon in her arms, is now known over the world. It has raised over $1 million (over €0.9 million) in humanitarian aid for the country.

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