Cartoon of Ukrainian Tractor Towing Russian Tank Makes Fun of Invasion

A Ukrainian cartoon of a blue tractor towing a Russian tank has gone viral on Twitter, mocking the Russian invasion that has continued for far longer than either Russian President Vladimir Putin or most military analysts anticipated.

The animated clip first appeared on a Ukrainian TikTok account, posted by @paola_zandar. The clip was later shared to Twitter by Marcus Moody (@_MJMoody_) on March 26 and has since racked up more than 765,000 views.

In the video, a grinning blue tractor that appears to represent Ukraine drags along a Russian tank, identifiable by the "Z" that has been emblazoned across the country's military vehicles, while cheerily singing in Russian. At one point, a sheep pops its head out of the tank and joins the song with its "baa."

The clip is a slightly altered version of a Russian children's song called "Blue Tractor," according to Euronews, in which different tractors pull a wagon with an unknown animal inside and ask the child viewer to guess the animal by its sound.

The Russian lyrics are the same in both versions, with the tractor singing, "Come on, try and guess, who is, who is, who is, who is singing the song."

The sheep that pokes out in the Ukrainian parody could be a dig at Russian soldiers blindly following the orders of their president.

A Ukrainian cartoon of a blue tractor towing a Russian tank has gone viral on Twitter. Here, smoke rises from a Russian tank destroyed by Ukrainian forces on the side of a road in Lugansk region on February 26, 2022.

Five weeks into the invasion of Ukraine, the country's defense forces continue to hold back Russian troops in many parts of the country, despite Russia's far greater military power. On the first day of the war, U.S. security officials predicted that Kyiv would fall within days.

On Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his forces had retaken Irpin, a strategic suburb of Kyiv, after a brutal month of back-and-forth street fighting. Russian and Ukrainian delegates met in Istanbul, Turkey, on Tuesday for peace talks, which were inconclusive.

Internet memes like the tractor cartoon have cropped up in Ukrainian social media throughout the war. Among the most popular is an image known as "Saint Javelin, the protector of Ukraine," which features Mary Magdalene adorned in khaki with a halo bearing Ukraine's coat of arms, holding a FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile launcher to her chest.

The phrase, "Russian warship, go f**k yourself," also became a meme after Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov said the words from Snake Island on the first day of the invasion. He was responding to Russian orders to surrender when the island came under air and sea bombardment. Hrybov was released as part of a prisoner exchange and awarded a military medal on Tuesday.

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