Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 1 – Vladimir Putin’s mobilization order highlights the fact that in Russia things are just the reverse of what they should be: those serving time in prisons and camps are asked to volunteer to go to fight in Ukraine while those who are “free” are compelled by the state machine to do so, Russians joke bitterly.
This is just one of the anecdotes in the latest batch collected by Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/44085/-). The best of the rest include:
· The real problem in Russia is that when pupils say Putin defeated the Nazis in World War II, their teachers don’t correct them but rather give them praise.
· Infantrymen who are being mobilized were asked to bring their underwear; airmen have been asked to bring their planes.
· The concept of a state sponsoring terrorism has taken on a whole new meaning in Russia. Afghanistan’s Taliban, recognized as a terrorist group by Moscow, has now agreed to provide Russia with gas and wheat.
· Reliable sources say that in the fifth wave of mobilization, the Kremlin will call up pets and plants. Some Russian veterinarians are now advertising on the Internet that they will “find flat feet in your cat” and get it off.
· Putin has reversed Suvorov. The Russian general said fight not with numbers but with skill. Putin has reversed that and declared that Russia must fight “not by skill but with numbers.”
· Russian recruits are asked whether they are ready to die for Putin. They respond by asking whether it might be possible for things to be the other way around?
· Suggestions in the West that NATO might use nuclear weapons if Russia does show that the West is apparently unacquainted with the words of Putin and Medvedev that only peace-loving Russia has the right to use such weapons.
· Russian leaders have ensured that Russians won’t starve because they always provide more than enough noodles, a word which means not only food but nonsensical propaganda.
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