[ti:Humor Helps Ukrainians Deal with War] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]Although Russia's war in Ukraine is not a laughing matter, [00:03.90]Ukrainians are learning to laugh about it anyway. [00:07.15]Not because they want to. But because laughter can be like a medicine. [00:13.92]Serhiy Lipko will soon be sent to the battlefields of Ukraine. [00:18.37]But he has also been working as a comic, [00:21.19]a performer who tells jokes to make people laugh. [00:24.70]At a comedy club in Kyiv, he took the stage wearing army fatigues. [00:30.80]He joked that military training with NATO instructors [00:34.56]has been a great chance to work his English. [00:37.68]He also joked about how nervous he had been about using costly military equipment. [00:43.12]He was afraid of breaking it. [00:45.12]Russian President Vladimir Putin and his troops are favorite targets [00:50.30]of dark Ukrainian wartime humor. [00:53.48]But there are also things they will not joke about. [00:56.64]Ukrainian dead are not laughed about nor are the worst battles like Mariupol. [01:02.70]The same is true of war crimes. [01:06.52]"Tragedies cannot and will never be the object of humor," said Anastasia Zukhvala. [01:13.17]She is Lipko's wife who also works as a comic. [01:17.96]"This is an absolutely crazy time, beyond ordinary experience," she said. [01:23.42]"Our life now is made of paradoxes, and it can even be funny." [01:29.80]Ukraine's most famous comedian is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now the country's president. [01:36.72]He was elected in 2019. [01:39.27]Before that, Zelenskyy played a high school teacher who accidentally becomes president [01:45.18]in the TV comedy series Servant of the People. [01:49.32]But Zelenskyy has not had much cause for comedy since the February 24 invasion. [01:57.04]While he works to build international support and soldiers fight, [02:02.03]Ukrainians away from the frontlines are using jokes and humor as weapons. [02:08.48]It is used as a medicine against war-time anxiety and sadness. [02:15.56]Twenty-nine-year-old Yuliia Shytko said she felt in far better spirits [02:20.76]after laughing with the rest of the crowd through Lipko and other comedians' performances. [02:27.13]Most of their jokes were about the war. [02:31.40]"Laughing and stuff, that's how you cope," Shytko said. [02:35.48]Lipko and Zelenskyy crossed paths in comedy before the war. [02:41.03]The future president, then still a performer, was a judge in 2016 on the TV game show, [02:48.40]Make a Comedian Laugh. Lipko was a competitor. [02:54.16]Lipko is still joking about life in the army, [02:57.51]even as he prepares to travel to the frontlines. [03:00.61]His nickname in the army is "the comedian." [03:05.16]He joked that some things his fellow soldiers say and do [03:09.36]are so funny that he has to use them for his show. [03:14.24]Afterward, he said his comedy should help him during battle. [03:19.28]But he has worries of his own. [03:21.33]He has been trying to get his parents to leave their village in the south. [03:26.09]He believes it is too close to the fighting. [03:29.42]But they are laughing off the danger. [03:31.89]His mother joked that should Russian missiles appear in her potato field, [03:36.60]that would save her a lot of work. [03:39.68]"My mother never joked before the war," Lipko said. [03:42.40]"They use my weapons against me ... and that's unfair." [03:47.72]I'm Dan Novak. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM