This issue is the 12th for 2023 and the 22nd since the beginning of the war in Ukraine... «Die Fledermaus», the Bat in French, is the third operetta by Johann Strauss. It takes place in Vienna, a night of celebration, and tells the revenge of Dr Falke against his friend Gabriel von Eisenstein who forced him to return from a masked ball to return in his costume of bat (1). Viennese farce, it can also embody human duality. In a first point, we will evoke the facets of the bat that can disconcert- is it bird, is it mouse? In the following points, we will evoke the Russian and Ukrainian situations from this ambiguity, the bat causing both fear and attraction can illustrate the contrasting personalities of the Russian and Ukrainian presidents. One thing is for sure, in diplomacy, ambiguity is always a threat.
1-The disconcerting facets of the bat
2-On the Russian side, a « bat at the Prater »
3-On the Ukrainian side, the storytelling of « Batman »
4-Ambiguïty , a main source of cognitive dissonance