Anybody who follows Ukraine in the news has probably seen the video of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych hit on the head by a falling wreath. There’s also a video of doors closing on him as he entered the parliament for his own presidential inauguration. And in 2004, while on campaign in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, he collapsed to the ground clutching his chest after an opposition activist threw an egg at him.
Recently Ukrainians had more reasons to laugh (or cry) when Yanukovych, whose native language is Russian, struggled to come up with the Ukrainian word for Christmas tree. While talking in Ukrainian about the New Year preparation in downtown Kyiv, he paused for over 10 seconds searching for the right word and finally uttered the Russian word “yolka.” Watch it here. After this incident new videos, remixes, and parodies sprung up making fun of him with comments along the lines of “the revenge of the yolka,” (referring to the wreath fiasco), “that door must have been made out of yolka,” “I wish there was a brick hidden in that wreath” and similar. A Ukrainian comedy studio made a skit about the falling wreath that went viral on YouTube.
Viktor Yanukovych has long been the butt of jokes in the Ukrainian press and internet, even during his pre-presidential years. But perhaps he is most infamous for his spoken blunders that make him sound uneducated even to Ukrainian school children. One can understand unfortunate moments of falling wreaths and closing doors, but people are less forgiving when the president insists that Anton Chekhov was a Ukrainian poet, makes unforgiving spelling errors, and other ridiculous mistakes that are probably too hard to explain to an English speaker.
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