Ebonite humor of "Kvartal 95": grand piano, thermos and Skadovsk

The "Kvartal 95" studio, founded by current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been known for a number of jokes over the past decade that have been received with mixed reactions by society.

Censor.NET cites some of the studio's programmes that caused the most outrage in the society.

During the dispersal of Euromaidan in 2013 and the brutal beating of students and protesters by Berkut officers, the studio joked about this.

"Viktor Fedorovich, I have a physics question. If we give Berkut officers ebonite sticks and put Maidan protesters in woollen clothes, will we be able to generate electricity?" - said actor Yevhen Koshovyi in the issue.

In the 22 May 2014 edition of "Chisto NEWS", when Russia occupied Crimea and started the war in Donbas, Zelenskyy said: "If you believe the main news in Russia, the Russians are finally moving their troops away from the border with Ukraine, but if you believe the rumours, Russian troops are on the border, just the Ukrainian border is being pushed forward a little bit."

The future president of Ukraine said this while in Moscow.

In 2014, the studio showed the head of the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation, Ramzan Kadyrov, in tears during Muslim prayers, accompanied by a joke about the demolition of the Lenin monument in Kharkiv. Afterwards, Zelenskyy had to apologise for his colleagues' inappropriate joke.

"We would never laugh at some holy things, regardless of the surname, so I said 'sorry', in front of all Muslim people. You don't joke about such things, no one meant to say anything nasty," he later said.

In 2016, "Kvartal 95" showed a miniature called "Tsytsko Brothers - The Game Without Pants", which became one of the most famous in the studio's oeuvre. The current President Zelenskyy was playing the piano "without hands".

Also in 2016, performing in Jurmala, the then "Kvartal" actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy compared Ukraine's difficult economic situation and cooperation with international partners to an actress in German adult films, noting that "Ukraine is ready to accept any amount from any side.

In 2020, the president said that the joke was about the state's financial lack of independence and he was not comparing Ukraine to a prostitute.

In 2019, during a concert of "Kvartal 95" Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the Tomos of autocephaly of the OCU a "thermos". In a miniature, he played the role of then-President Poroshenko, who was recording a New Year's address to Ukrainians on the street, which caused him to freeze and said: "The only thing that warms the soul is to give Ukraine a thermos."

However, later, Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine said in an interview that Zelenskyy had apologised for the joke.

Already on 20 October 2019, the studio mocked the arson attack on the house of former National Bank of Ukraine Governor Valeria Gontareva. Yevhen Koshovyi and the Verevka Choir sang a song about the burned house: "The house was burning, it was burning, a woman was crying in London..." In his editorial for the issue, actor Stepan Kazanin called the fire in Gontareva's house a "bright event." 

Valeria Gontareva herself called the issue a shame.

In April 2021, after the law on the functioning of the Ukrainian language came into force, Kvartal decided to dedicate a comedy sketch to this issue. The issue, titled "Not a Brothel, but a Skyscraper," plays on stereotypes about Ukrainian culture and life.

Actors Yevhen Koshovyi and Yuriy Krapov depict a conversation between the brothel owner and a "regular visitor". The "brothel workers" in Ukrainian folk costumes also bring a loaf to the visitor, and Koshovyi (who plays the main prostitute) wears a yellow and blue wreath. The brothel is called "a house of love and caresses, pleasure and coitus, a smear of temptation, a temple of temptation." Later, Koshovyi adds that the brothel is called "Shmarochos" and has "a cheese factory, a distillery, and a cherry orchard."

On 31 December 2023, after the full-scale invasion of Russia, the New Year's issue joked about a woman who had allegedly arrived from occupied Skadovsk to Zakarpattia. She tries to speak Ukrainian, occasionally distorting the meaning of words. Introducing herself, she told the interlocutor that she was from Skadovsk. In her performance, the phrase sounded like "siskadovska".

The joke outraged the network, and the mayor of Skadovsk, Oleksandr Yakovlev, called on the filmmakers to apologise for the issue.

Subsequently, Yevhenia Virlych, editor-in-chief of Kavun.City and coordinator of the Kherson-based Rayon.in.ua network, filed a complaint against 1+1 TV channel to the Commission on Journalistic Ethics. She stressed that this issue of "Kvartal 95" discriminates against residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine, in particular women.

"Detector Media" asked "1+1 Media" whether they consider such jokes about people from the occupied territories acceptable and whether they plan to respond to the outrage of the mayor of Skadovsk.