Aleksei pulled a thermos, plastic cups, and a baggie of pre-sliced lemons out of his backpack. Denis pointed to his baggie. “That's—that's age. That is age,” he said, both praising Aleksei’s organizational skills and reminding him that twentysomethings wouldn't bother. Denis and Aleksei make up 2/3 of the team Middle-Aged Humor, whom I first met in Odessa at the 2017 League of Laughter festival. They are, in fact, middle-aged. And as Russians competing in Ukraine, they drew a lot of attention from the Odessa audiences—and applause. When they ended a spring 2017 octofinals performance with a hug for their Western Ukrainian trainer, the crowd clapped for over a minute.

On this occasion, though, in May 2019, Aleksei poured me some cognac from his thermos outside the House of KVN in Moscow as we waited for a regional competition to begin. I asked the team how their second season in League of Laughter had gone, and whether they planned to keep competing in Ukraine.

“Are you going to go to the festival this year?”

“Maybe,” they said. If they could come up with enough material before the February festival in Odessa they would go. If not, they wouldn't. The novelty of just being Russians competing in Ukraine had worn off and they sought a new angle.

The conversation then turned to kids, vacations, and the Russian education system. “You know,” Aleksei told me. “I never thought, back then in high school, that I would be sitting and drinking with an American spy.” I bit into my lemon.

Aleksei and Denis had come to support a team from the Russian State Social University in the Moscow and Moscow Region second quarterfinals match. But the next day an Odessan actually competed alongside a Russian team, Manhole Cover (Kryshka Liuka), in the third quarterfinal. Alexander Sas, a Ukrainian professional author, wrote for the Russian team and took the stage with them for the game. No Ukrainian teams (outside of the Crimea and disputed eastern territories) compete in Russia right now. But Ukrainian authors like Sas can still sell their material on the Russian KVN market, one that is, of course, much larger and more lucrative than the Ukrainian one. Whether Sas joined Manhole Cover as a diplomatic gesture, an advertising manoeuvre, or out of nostalgia for the KVN stage is difficult to say. But both he and Middle-Aged humor demonstrate where the trajectories of Russian KVN and Ukrainian League of Laughter intersect.