Duma Deputies Now Must Respond to Commands Not Just to ‘Vote’ Correctly but to ‘Offer Their Paws’ and ‘Fetch,’ Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 25 – In the latest expression of popular contempt for Duma deputies, Russians are saying that these dog-like people must now not only respond to commands to “vote” this way or that and “sit” when they are told but also to “offer their paws” and “fetch” when their Kremlin overlords command.

            That is just one of the new anecdotes circulating in Russia that have been assembled and published by Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45223/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       Any businessman who doesn’t make a voluntary contribution to the budget will have future criminal cases against him expanded to include the reference in every case to crimes he has committed up to now with the words “while having criminal intent.”

·       Russians, seeing steam rising from hatches in the pavement, have concluded that the authorities are warming up the bomb shelters, evidence of the first practical results of Putin’s recent speech to the Federal Assembly.

·       When Moscow complains about how the West has attacked Russia in Ukraine, it is behaving just like a burglar who says he was ambushed by trash in a hut he was trying to rob.

·       The Novosti news agency was far too modest in describing Putin’s speech. It said his remarks were “an information bomb.” Instead, it shoud have said it was the most important event since the appearance of humans on earth.

·       Putin knows that everyone knows he is lying, but that only makes him more willing to continue to do so.

·       Russia is about to get Potemkin megacities in place of Potemkin villages now that the Duma has allowed Rosstat not to publish data on price increases or mortality rates. Everything can be hidden and Russians will be forced to conclude that everything is wonderful.

·       A Duma deputy insists that he isn’t for sale except for money.

·       No Russian had heard of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut a year ago, but now they are told that without the Russian army taking it, their country cannot see real happiness and patriotism. Life will get better, the world will be multipolar, and many Russians will even stop drinking. What is located there? A cash horde from Yanukovich’s time or a secret passage to the middle of the earth?