Russians Increasingly Use Anecdotes to Talk about Putin’s War in Ways He Doesn’t Approve

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – The Kremlin has prohibited Russian media from calling Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a war or allowing outlets to honestly discuss the crimes he and his military are engaged in there. But Russians using their innate creativity are turning to jokes and anecdotes to discuss what the powers that be say must not be.

            Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova offers two new collections of this kind of bleak even bitter but extremely instructive humor (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/42504/- and publizist.ru/blogs/107374/42526/-). Among the best of her latest offerings are the following twelve:

·       The combination of inflation and economic collapse means that a single piece of paper in a Moscow store now costs more than a share of Sberbank on the London exchange.

·       Today, those who say that the powers are working badly will be prosecuted for lack of respect to the authorities, while those who say it is working well will be hauled before judges for disseminating fake news.

·       Russian deputy defense minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov’s suggestion to a Russian soldier who has lost his legs that he should “stand up on them” is prompting Russians to ask whether Yevkurov, the former head of Ingushetia, has completely lost his mind.

·       Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine has become “a powerful catalyst” for changes in various countries. In the West, it is leading some to end their reliance on coal and oil and thus move into the future. In Russia, however, it is leading Moscow to march rapidly back to the Middle Ages.

·       Russian patriots say that Moscow has every right to bomb Kyiv because the Americans bombed Belgrade, forgetting that they themselves denounced the US action as a crime. What they are doing is to insist that Russia should “do the same evil things that we condemn.”

·       Putin propagandists on Moscow television are now divided, with some showing themselves to be energetic morons and others, dull mentally handicapped people.

·       In the first month of the three-day special military operation, Russia has achieved great things: the de-Nazification of imported bearings, the demilitarization of KAMAZ, and the non-bloc status of IKEA. And there are signs that some other figures are already higher than in the Afghan conflict.

·       On Jewish advocate for Putin’s war, Solovyev, says he’d like to go back to the 19^th century when “Warsaw was outs, Finland was ours and Alaska was ours.” But another Jewish advocate for Putin cautions that in the 19^th century, “the pale of settlement was ours” as well.

·       Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu says that draftees won’t be sent to hot spots. Apparently, they will be sent only to “hot commas and dots” instead.

·       Those who call for the destruction of Ukraine are being celebrated. But those who repeat Christ’s injunction not to kill or sing a verse from the Russian song, “Do Russians Want War?” are being incarcerated.

·       Moscow news is reporting, the story goes, that “the identities of the Nazi Ukrainian bastards who shot Russian soldiers advancing in peace and kindness in the Kharkiv direction have now been established …”  

·       Poland has announced that it will soon stop using Russian coal and by the end of the year end its import of Russian oil. Such announcements, some in Moscow say, show that Warsaw is just waiting for a Russian nuclear strike.