A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.
A behind-the-scenes remark from footage of a campaign video shoot for Kharkiv mayor Mikhail Dobkin, leaked online in 2007. It became a meme about botched takes and politicians' awkward performances.
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In the frame used for the meme, a man in a white shirt and striped tie is seen sitting at a table in front of a blue background. A thick book with a green cover lies in front of him, and he himself looks into the camera, speaking in a focused and slightly tense manner. Such a shot is typical for campaign advertising: a neutral background, business attire, and deliberately serious delivery.
It is exactly this contrast between the official form and what is said off-camera that became the basis of the meme. The viewer sees the familiar image of a politician, while in their head the crude remark plays, undercutting the seriousness of the video.
The shot looks almost documentary, and that is precisely why an ordinary campaign spot seems especially unnatural next to it.
The recordings were made in December 2005 in Kharkiv, when Mikhail Dobkin was preparing a campaign video for the mayoral election. The shoot was directed by the then-secretary of the city council. Dobkin tried several times to read the prepared text, while his interlocutor gave him notes, interspersing them with swearing.
Dobkin complained about the quality of the text, while the advisor criticized his delivery, and in the end dozens of takes ended up on camera. It was these raw fragments, not a finished video, that later spread online. Dobkin won the mayoral election on March 26, 2006.
The circumstances of the leak are described differently depending on the source. In one version, a rival may have leaked the footage; in another, the recordings came from a TV channel's servers. In a 2017 statement, one side spoke of a disgruntled editor working for a competitor, but this version remains disputed and not fully confirmed.
The video was posted on YouTube on September 27, 2007, three days before an early parliamentary election. By September 28 it had already made the world's top eight most-watched videos of the day. As of February 2026, the original had gathered about 8.5 million views, and parodies and memes had sprung up around it across the Russian-language internet.
In 2012 Nikita Mikhalkov mentioned the episode in a documentary film, and Dobkin replied that he hadn't expected such a high estimate of his influence. In 2017 he admitted that he no longer rewatches the recording.
The phrase is used as an ironic call to redo a botched take: people write it when someone is doing poorly on a simple task or when a text has clearly come out badly. The template transfers easily to any situation where something needs to be tried again, and it sounds almost like a command.
The humor rests on the contrast between a politician's polished public image and the crude speech happening behind the scenes. The irony is heightened by the fact that the profane judgment is directed not at the person but at the speech text itself. In a 2011 interview, Dobkin recalled that at first people laughed for a month or two, and then started asking where the participants in the shoot were now.
The phrase also became a reference to the genre of political advertising itself: viewers perceived the behind-the-scenes footage as an "honest" version of campaigning, and it was precisely this glimpse behind the curtain that made the meme appealing.
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