If Donbass Attack Doesn’t Work, Russians Joke, Putin Will Bomb Moscow’s Ukraine Hotel as That’s Better than Nothing

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 20 – Russians may not be going to anti-war protests in massive numbers, but they are coming up with more jokes, often bitter, about Putin’s war in Ukraine, including the one in the title which Russians believe may be in prospect because the city authorities have taken down signs designating the hotel and put up “no parking” ones instead.

            In her latest collection for Publizist.ru, Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova offers some wonderful new Russian anecdotes about how Russians see the war in Ukraine and Moscow’s policies at home and abroad affecting their lives and well-being (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/42730/-).

·       Moscow is now banning foreigners who have criticized Moscow’s “special operation” in Ukraine from entering Russia for more years than these people have left in their lives. This shows that the Russian powers are behaving like a blind man lost in a crowd: he strikes out at random but doesn’t get what he wants and doesn’t understand that “his only enemy is his own madness.”

·       The Russian government is now seeking to import various products from Iran. The Russian “super power” isn’t even asking China but Iran. It makes one think that it will soon be acting like North Korea.

·       China is now opening a transport corridor across Central Asia, the Caspian, and the Caucasus to bypass Russia. This shows just how powerful Russia has become: even its supposed friends are afraid to send goods through it.

·       Having proclaimed that Rurik’s father was a Slav, Putin is likely to reveal in the near future that Jesus was a Russian by nationality given that his mother had a purely Russian name, Mary. Anyone who disagrees will be punished according to a law, soon to be adopted, against spreading “historical fakes.”

·       Russians are coming up with reasons why Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov should be the next president of Russia. Among them are the following: He has achieved so much with only six years of schooling, he doesn’t bother with elections, and most important he gets all his money directly from Allah. If only Russians could be so lucky.