Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 20 – Some weeks bring
more, some less, but every week produces a rich harvest of manifestations of “official
insanity” in Russia, according to Vera Yurchenko of Moscow’s “Novaya gazeta”
newspaper. Today, she publishes her “top 10” list from the last seven days and
asks readers to vote for their favorites (novayagazeta.ru/politics/69257.html).
This week’s list includes:
1.
Natalya
Poklonskaya, the procurator in Russian-occupied Crimea, declared that she “thanks
God” the West has imposed sanctions on Russia. It shows that the West is afraid
of Russia and helps officials to work better. As Yurchenko notes, this week’s
list of absurdities could have consisted “entirely of Poklonskaya citations.”
For example, she also declared that the abdication of Nicholas II was invalid
because he signed it in pencil not ink.
2.
Yanina
Pavlenko, who oversees wine production in Crimea, however, is upset that Moscow
has not imposed sanctions on French and Italian wines. She has appealed to
Vladimir Putin to impose a ban on the import of European wines so that Crimean
wines will get a boost in sales.
3.
Education
Minister Dmitry Livanov said that the Day of the Reunification of Crimea would
join the Day of Russia, the Day of National Unity and the Victory Day as one of
the four main holidays of the year and form the basis on which “will be
organized the entire system of educational methods.”
4.
Culture
Minister Vladimir Medinsky told RBK that those people call liberals are simply “Internet
clickers or their idols,” adding that “these are not liberals but a
totalitarian state” and that those who are called “obscurantists and
retrogrades’ are much more tolerant and objective than so-called liberals.”
5.
Vladimir
Zhirinovsky, the outspoken leader of the LDPR, suggested that Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko should give him the Ukrainians Roshen factory in
Lipetsk. In exchange, the Russian politician said, he would drop his claims on
the company’s factor in Kostopol, “which was built on the site of the company
of his grandfather.”
6.
Vitaly
Milonov, a deputy in St. Petersburg’s legislative assembly, said that Russian
officials must intervene in cases where children may be exposed to LGBT parents
because the influence of the latter on the former is “much worse” than that of
alcoholic parents. “The government must
not hypocritically stand aside” from this danger, he added.
7. Elena Mizulina, the Duma deputy who is to be elevated to the
Federation Council and who has long distinguished herself for truly absurd and
even disturbing proposals, last week called for amending Russia’s Family Code
to insert the principle of the presumption of good intentions on the part of
parents so that they will not be punished if their children or those working
for their children bring charges of abuse against them. “In a Russian family,” she said, “the child
must not be equal to the parents, and it is necessary to defend this
traditional value.”
8.
Petersburg
deputy Yevgeny Marchenko wants Moscow to prohibit Russians from taking
vacations in Turkey, Egypt, and Thailand because in such places, there are “accidents
on the roads, criminality flourishes, and the climate is different than ours.” If a ban can’t be imposed by law, then he
suggests that the government should limit the number of flights to such places,
introduce a visa regime, or raise the price of insurance to discourage Russians
from travelling.
9. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said he would divorce his
wife if she ever served him food from elsewhere that she could obtain in
Chechnya.
10. Viktor Ivanov, who heads Russia’s counter-narcotics
program, says that Western intelligence services appear to be behind the spread
of spice drugs in Russia, a follow-on to his earlier suggestion that US and UK
centers were drugging people to promote the organization of color revolutions.
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