The Russia-Ukraine War Already Has Its Own ‘Imagine’ Video

For a while, it seemed like nothing could be worse than the Imagine video. The agony of watching Gal Gadot, Mark Ruffalo, Sia, and more famous types attempting to comfort the world (and put the spotlight on themselves) at the dawn of a global pandemic, appeared poised to go down as the new decade’s worst artifact of celebrity culture. Instead, it didn’t even make it two years. AnnaLynne McCord, an actress best known for roles on Nip/Tuck and the 90210 reboot, has thoroughly dethroned the Imagine video by reacting to the invasion of Ukraine with a poem about how she would have been able to prevent the bloodshed—if only she were Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mom.

“Dear President Vladimir Putin, I’m so sorry that I was not your mother,” she began in a video posted to Twitter Thursday.

If I was your mother, you would have been so loved

Held in the arms of joyous light

Never would this story’s plight the world

Unfurled

Before our eyes

A pure demise of nation sitting peaceful under a night sky

If I was your mother

The world would have been warm

So much laughter and joy, and nothing would harm.

She goes on to vow that, if she’d been Putin’s mom, she would have “died to protect [him] from the unjust, the violence, the terror, the uncertainty,” and that the magic of her love would have prevented the current “torture of unwrit youth.” Never have we seen a worse version of “I could fix him.”

This is not McCord’s first dive into social and political news. She’s discussed her experiences as a sexual assault survivor and branded herself as an “Anti Human-Trafficking Ambassador” on a mission to “#EndSlavery not just of the body but also of the mind” (???). She also founded an anti-trafficking meditation organization called The Love Storm—a title that has (hopefully unintentional) QAnon echoes.

McCord’s insistence that war in Ukraine could have been prevented if only she’d been around 69 years ago also feels like a 2022 take on Mark Wahlberg’s infamous assertion, that, if he had been aboard the planes hijacked planes that crashed into the Twin Towers, 9/11 “wouldn’t have went down like it did.” (“There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin,” he told Men’s Journal in 2012, “and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.’”)

Just as Wahlberg suggested that 9/11 victims were just a bunch of wimps, by claiming that her maternal largess would have prevented the invasion of Ukraine, McCord also seems to imply that the blame for the bloodshed lies with Putin’s real-life mom. As Jez alum Stassa Edwards put it on Twitter, it’s part of a “forming internet narrative that Putin is just a toxic bro in need of both feminism and a hug.” Mrs. Putina didn’t hold him in the arms of joyous light enough, or something, which I guess would translate to a hug at bedtime and maybe some kisses on his boo-boos? Photographic evidence suggests, however, that Maria Putina gave her son at least one hug—or a side hug, at bare minimum. Jury is still out on how many hugs it take to stop a war.