Here’s a great new Ukrainian song mocking the “Ukrainian biolabs” fake:

A short resume of the song in English:

Foreign scientists created a virus that makes Ukrainian birds poop on Russia and make Russian women give birth to babies that all look like Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian ultranationalist of the 1940s era, and can’t speak [bad word for the Russian language.] Be very afraid, bitches, because even mice in the fields hate [bad word for Russian people] with everything they have.

It’s a definite Eurovision contender. Watch the video, it’s all pretty self-explanatory. I’ve lost a close friend to the Ukrainian biolabs, but at least I’ve got the song to make me feel less lonely.

Remember that “brave Russian journalist” who raised an anti-war poster on the Russian news?

Here’s an update:

This is one of the simplest, most primitive psy-ops in existence. A fake dissident is created and then used to promote the official viewpoint to people who wouldn’t be taken in by the standard government propaganda.

For instance, in Russia there’s a “dissident TV channel” called Rain. Most people don’t know that it’s owned almost entirely by the natural gas oligarchy. This channel is allowed to sound like it’s anti-government to attract the small dissident minority. It still transmits the party line but in a smarter way than other channels. It’s the “yes, Putin is bad but” kind of stuff. People are attracted by the “bad Putin” part and swallow the rest without even noticing that they’ve been had.

Again, this is all true. Many people don’t know that Ukraine started getting ahead in the standard of living because this is new. Ten or even 5 years ago, the situation was the exact opposite. There have been massive changes in the past few years. Enormous reforms have been conducted in Ukraine. The bureaucratic obstacles to starting and running a business, for example, were dramatically reduced. The tax burden on startups was seriously lowered. Enormous efforts were made to re-industrialize, and we all know how I feel about that. Roads, schools, and hospitals were built. Russia has done none of this. None of the enormous oil wealth went into improving the standard of living. Starting a business is still less profitable than not doing it.

Obviously, things in Ukraine were very far from ideal. But it’s undeniable that there was serious movement in the right direction. The thing about regional economies is that they are dynamic. We can’t learn a single thing about them and then hold on to that belief forever. What was true a decade ago no longer is.