A modest tip to Ukraine on PR and optics

Now is not the time for conspicuous consumption

Eastern Europeans have a famous tendency for flaunting bling and expensive designer products. This is very unfortunate when you’re begging the world for billions in aid (which, for the record, Ukraine should be getting).

This Veblenism gone wild is an atavistic habit from Soviet times, when conspicuous consumption became a compensatory flex after decades of burlap-sacks-for-Sunday-best deprivation - and now’s a very good time to turn it off. Only, they can’t help it.

Yesterday, I passed by a middle-aged Ukrainian lady in town, who was wearing an Armani Exchange hat. Leaving aside that Armani Exchange is the low-end aspirational wing of the Armani brand, generally sold to third rate rappers, jihadi militia commanders and inner city drug dealers, I felt, in real time, how “oh you poor dear, we will support you in your new home” got ever-so-slightly tinged with “youuu old cunt”. Irrational? Yes. Inevitable? Also yes.

Objectively, of course, having nice things is not really incompatible with being a country at war deserving of sympathy and assistance. But flaunting it is stupid - human psychology is immutable, don’t make it work against you even in people who are sympathetic to your plight. People instinctively react to such visual cues - we are all wired to spot inconsistencies, and when we see a plea for help paired with displays of luxury, it can trigger involuntary skepticism or resentment, even among allies.

It’s not just the designer brands on random refugees. Nubile Ukrainian influencers who post heartbreaking videos of themselves in fatigues cannot help but also post themselves twerking on gigayachts bobbing off the Cap d’Antibes, and Russian propaganda doesn’t shy away from abusing videos of Ukrainian pornstars frolicking around Kyiv nightclubs.

Likewise, the Bentleys with Ukrainian licence plates cruising around Monaco were probably bought long before the war, without any assistance from American taxpayers (only Ukrainian ones, one realistically expects), but from the point of view of optics and PR, it’s a big fail, yielding to the worst impulses of national character in ways that materially reduce the chances of their country in the ongoing conflict (which will hopefully end soon, on favorable terms).

Privileged strata doing tone-deaf flaunting, even while trying to muster support for their compatriots on the frontlines, are doing their country no favors.

Tone. It. The. Fuck. Down. If I was a wealthy Ukrainian refugee, I’d buy an enormous villa on Lake Geneva hidden behind a 5 meter wall of greenery, and go to the shops in nondescript slacks and old t-shirts for the next five years. You can still have the lavish parties, just do it out of sight, and you certainly should not post them on fucking sucking Instagram.

Information war is real, and those inadvertently treasonous imbeciles are shipping ammunition straight to the Kremlin. It takes only a few displays like this to sour American public opinion on your cause - and in fact, this has already happened.

Of course, it’s also possible that those people genuinely don’t care what happens to other Ukrainians, and are just exhibiting low-trust society behavior. God knows we get plenty of that in Slavic countries.

So from one Slav to others - please for the love of all that’s good in the world, if you really care about your country, try to avoid such unforced errors. Don’t shoot the messenger (figuratively or literally), I’m not downplaying the situation, just asking people to play the game smarter.

Please, for your own sake, think about this.