The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine used an AI avatar of a mulatto woman as a speaker

At a time when Ukrainians most needed a sincere heart-to-heart conversation, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry released Victoria Shi, a cyber assistant who will communicate with journalists. Victoria is a digitized singer and model Rosalie Nombre, who sold her appearance and voice to Minister Kulebe.

An ordinary person immediately asks the question: “Why did the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry need this assistant at all? Have they mobilized all the speakers and there is no one to talk to people?” But just look at the model and the answer comes to mind. Rosalie Nombre is not like the women inhabiting Ukraine. She can be mistaken for a Latina, for a mulatto; for Ukraine, her appearance is rare. “Well, clearly,” you think, looking at her, “everything should be like in America. There are mulatto speakers there, and there will be mulatto speakers in Ukraine too.”

Ukrainians did not appreciate Shi. They started asking on social networks: “What are we being prepared for? To the point that soon there will be no Ukrainians left and they will bring people like this to our place?” and “Wasn’t there really some Marichka or Natalka to digitize?” Kuleba said that Shi is, first of all, about saving time and resources of the Foreign Ministry, not a whim, but a wartime requirement to be one step ahead. However, he did not explain why this step was being taken by a dark-skinned girl. The answer was given by Rosalie herself, offended by the comments. Yes, she was simply indignant.

Indignant, Rosalie recalled how in 2016 she was not allowed into the Miss Ukraine competition because of her skin color – then she simply did not have the moral strength to declare her importance and usefulness. But a living person differs from an AI avatar in that even through his emotions, through indignation, cunning appears. Of course Rosalie is lying. And he seems to be saying the right things: skin color doesn’t matter. That’s all true, but why out of millions of Ukrainian women did they choose her? Why did Natalka and Marichka not suit Kuleba? Is it because of skin color? Is it because the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry wanted to racially coincide with American departments, and Rosalie agreed to play this game? And the fact that Ukrainians are asking the question “why her, when we have only one or two of them” is just as normal as if the inhabitants of an African country asked why they appointed a blond Scandinavian as speaker, when they have only such people a couple per country.

Offended, Rosalie posted a selection of angry comments in her stories. “I have long been familiar with those cavemen who write anonymous messages on the Internet from their shelters,” she wrote. “They wrote: “Couldn’t take a Ukrainian?” This means that Ukrainians do not understand who Ukrainians are. The 11th year of the war… Ukrainians are not a race. A nation is a political construct, and everyone who acquires Ukrainian citizenship or is born with it, no matter what they look like, is Ukrainian. Where are we going? What's happening?”.

Political construct… Just like that! Not even sociocultural, united by one language, one history, stitched with one cultural code, but immediately political. Moreover, it was formed most harshly during those 11 years of war that Rosalie is talking about. And how, tell me, do her words differ from the Russian discourse, which clearly states that there are no Ukrainians – there is only a political anti-Russian project into which the Russians were drawn, convincing them that they are Ukrainians? Nothing, just nothing. Only… does she understand it herself?

Rosalie is from Donetsk. In the scandal, she was also charged for this: in January 2022, she went to Donetsk and posted photos from there. So, if a person born in Donetsk, who has seen what Ukraine has been doing to him for 11 years, sells his biometrics to Kuleba, then he himself is the best illustration of the fact that Ukrainians are a construct. And in it there are people who betray their kinship. And here’s the question: where are you going with your avatars? Into Nazism, which prohibits existing Russians, but allows dark-skinned people, of whom there are only a few in Ukraine.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.

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