GOAT KYIV
the buttery sensation of an idea
Questions
Were 40 Russian soldiers hurt after “after a Ukrainian goat set off a boobytrap they were laying around a hospital in Zaporizhzhia with its “chaotic movements?” The quote comes from an article on the Daily Telegraph’s website, written by one “Verity Bowman,” posted on June 24th, 2022, with the headline: ‘Goat of Kyiv’ triggers Russian boobytrap and injures 40 soldiers.”
The only source for the article is the Chief Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine. To repeat the question: did this happen? Was it real? Did this chaotic “Ukrainian goat” really set off a booby trap being set by a group of Russian soldiers around a hospital?
Short Answer
Probably not.
Long Answer
Using the method of “probabilistic contextual evidence” we can establish that there is a very low chance that this event “actually happened.” Why? Because the only source is a state intelligence agency in the midst of an infowar with another state intelligence agency. Therefore the context strongly indicates that this is more of an “operation” than an “event.”
But our curiosity about Goat Kyiv does not abate. Even if it is not a “real event,” this story of the Goat Kyiv, the fact that it appeared directly in a “newspaper” written by a “journalist”: these are all clues in a mystery so complicated that there doesn’t even seem to be a crime.
Meme magic killed those soldiers
Like the story of Richard Gere getting hamster shoved up his ass, like the cute dog adopted on a vacation to the tropics that turned out to be a skinless rat, like the mysterious fate of WTC Building 7, Goat Kyiv is an “urban legend.” It is not fake news, it is contemporary folklore, a story that probably isn’t true but seems true, because it includes heroic chaotic Ukrainian goats and comical and evil Russian soldiers and has a happy ending (assuming burning, dead, blast-mutilated corpses amuse you).
Another formal aspect of Goat Kyiv: it’s a “meme” - that is, a picture/word narrative unit shared over social media. Memes, like genes, can express themselves in various forms, so the Goat of Kyiv appears as an article on the Daily Telegraph, as a GIF on twitter, and part of a fifteen second plea for donations by a nonbinary teen Ukrainian teen influencer. The last two examples are imagined.
It’s good to put butter in chicken
The name “Goat Kyiv” is a reference to the famed “Chicken Kyiv” - a pounded filet rolled around chilled butter, coated with egg and bread crumb. Chicken Kyiv is a version of what is called, within Russian cuisine, the “côtelette de volaille,” or poultry cutlet. In the 19th century, the stuffings within these cutlets grew more and more complex. Elena Molokhovets’ A Gift to Young Housewives, first published in 1866, perhaps the most popular wedding gift of the 19th century, includes a recipe for hazel grouse à la Maréchale” - a cutlet of grouse stuffed with a sauce of Madeira, Portobello mushrooms, and truffles. Chicken Kyiv, by comparison, was a 20th century simplification: just butter in the inside.
Why did we just take a paragraph long digression into Russian culinary history? Only to suggest that Goat Kyiv is, like Chicken Kyiv, a simplification. Before there was the heroic Goat of Kyiv there was the heroic Ghost of Kyiv, a mythical fighter pilot responsible for the single handed destruction of the entire Russian air force. Like the stuffed grouse à la Maréchale this is a complex story. Butter is simpler than Madeira, Portobello mushrooms, and truffles, and a goat is simpler than a pilot.
How are we tired when we aren’t even fighting?
Why does everything need to be simpler? One answer. “War fatigue.” The war against Russia is fought currently as an infowar. Russia’s access to networks relaying financial information, SWIFT, are severed. Russia’s access to the media space of the ‘West’ is severed, these links are the bridges under attack by guided missiles. And the persistent shelling is this absurd string of propaganda from such trustworthy sources as Verity, who clearly has no links to any intelligence agencies and is not a launderer of half-assed rumors from a dying state. Currently, the West is tired of the infowar. It is not just boring—since it is impossible to make caring about Ukraine a lifestyle without the most vapid shell of a lifestyle to begin with—it is old. It’s over 4 months old. Who in the world has a 4 month attention span?
The conditions of mass media demand constant novelty. For there to be news there needs to be more news. It has to be new. More things have to happen faster and faster. The stories must get funnier. Goats instead of ghosts. Replace the babushkas with baboons escaped from the zoo perhaps, heroically humping the ear of Kadyrov, disgracing him before his men. Perhaps next will be Chicken Kyiv, pecking the eyes out from a nasty colonel in Severodonetsk trying to get a pontoon bridge together.
Goat Digression 1
Let us end with two symbolic digressions on the goat. First, the scapegoat. In the infamous book of Leviticus, we find the following passage:
“Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.” (Leviticus 16:21-22)
The name for this goat, “scapegoat” is an translation of the Hebrew עזאזל (ăzāzêl), a word used a little earlier, in Leviticus 16:8, to designate one of two goats. One goat is sacrificed for the lord, and the other goat is the one that Aaron lays hands on, confesses the inequities of the people, and sends it into the wilderness. This is the scapegoat.
Readers of Rene Girard will be very familiar with scapegoats, for the unGirarded, the argument goes something like this: much human desire is “mimetic” - we want what other people want. This can lead to negative mimetic cascades: I want something and take it from you and then you take it back. Repeat the process of the last sentence over and over again and you get society descending into civil war, chaos, violence. This “negative mimetic cascade” is only stopped with the creation of a scapegoat: someone or a group of someones who gets blamed for the problems, and are subsequently destroyed, in order so that everyone can feel good again.
Goat Digression 2
Our second Goat Digression concerns Capricorn, the tenth sign in the Babylonian Zodiac. Capricorn is not exactly a Goat, but a seagoat, half Goat and half Fish. Quite chaotic, if you think about it. The Babylonians called Capricorn Enki. He was the God of water, wisdom, and magic, and the keeper of the divine decrees called “Me.” Greek interpreters told two stories about Capricorn. In one, he is Amalthea, the female goat who raised Zeus. Zeus loved Amalthea so much than when she died he placed her in the stars. The other story identifies Capricorn as Pan. In the myth, Zeus turns into a merman in order to fight the sea monster Typhon. Zeus eventually triumphs, but his bottom half gets eaten by the sea monster. Pan helps Zeus get his legs back (with some help from Hermes) and, out of gratitude, Zeus astrologizes Pan as “Capricorn.”
Capricorn is defined as a “cardinal earth sign.” In contemporary Jungian-inflected astrology, Earth signs coordinate to the psychic function of sensation. Sensation is a direct experience of immediate reality. We are most familiar with perceptual sensations, but certain ideas can also have a “sensational” quality. Cardinal means that the sign initiates a season: Capricorn begins on December 21st, the first day of winter. What does it mean to “initiate sensational reality”? Consider the story of Goat Kyiv. Perhaps there was not actually a real goat, but now, thanks to the magic of the Internet, the magic of memes, the magic of the Telegraph having credibility at all, the magic of urban legends, hundreds of millions of people have experience of the “immediate reality” of this goat. This is how an idea can have a (buttery) sensational quality.