Moscow’s Censorship Means Russians Will Be Last to Learn about Their Defeat in Ukraine, Some Muscovites Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 7 – One of the most serious consequences of the ever increasing censorship of news in the Russian Federation is that its citizens will be among the very last to learn of their country’s defeat in Ukraine, according to one anecdote that is now circulating in Moscow, Tatyana Pushkaryova says.

            Among the other jokes and anecdotes the Moscow journalist offers in her latest collection (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45097/-) are the following:

·       Russians now have intelligence voting, intelligent watches and intelligent homes, but they haven’t become one wit more intelligent themselves.

·       In the GULAG, the slogan was “to freedom with a future conscience;” now, in Russia’s prisons, the slogan has been updated to read “to the special military operation with a clear conscience.”

·       Moscow has an easy way to make all these Western tanks being sent to Ukraine irrelevant: it can simply order Russian troops to pull out.

·       Medvedev says that if Ukraine attacks Russian-occupied Crimea, there won’t be any talks between Moscow and Kyiv. But does that mean that there will be talks if Ukraine attacks Moscow or only if it attacks the fuehrer bunker there?

·       Russians fear Vissarion Belinsky may be the next to be labelled a foreign agent because he declared that patriotism was about hard work for the country rather than pompous words.

·       Just try to speak the truth for one day, Russians are told, and you’ll find yourself unemployed, without a family, cursed by all and an invalid lying in the hospital with wounds.

·       Putin has called for the country to “give birth” to 14,000 aviation industry specialists. It will be well if they are born lame and preferably legless so they can’t flee abroad.

·       A vacuum cleaner and Putin TV propagandists have this in common: they both suck up dirt, but while the former allows it to be thrown away, the latter throws it back at the audience.

·       Last summer, Putin called for lower car prices and more production of automobiles. As a result, prices went up and production went down. But despite that record, everyone is expected to believe him when he says there will be victory in Ukraine.