Kremlin ‘High Precision Roof’ Destroys Ukrainian Drone, Some Russians Say Officials Claim

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 3 – After drones exploded over the Kremlin, a debate has broken out between those who think that the Ukrainians are responsible and those who think that the Putin regime did this itself in order to open the way for more repressive actions, just as it did in 1999 with the apartment bombings and Chechnya.

            But perhaps the more interesting thing about this discussion is what some Russians are saying about how it happened that the drones didn’t do any serious damage. According to some, a Russian defense ministry spokesman has provided the answer: the Ukrainian drones, he suggests, were destroyed by “the high precision roof” of the Kremlin building.

            Other Russians are insisting that the supposed strike was in fact a rehearsal for a Victory Day air parade gone wrong. But there appears to be general agreement among those telling anecdotes in the Russian capital that one thing is certain: After this attack, workers will be called in to deepen the site of Putin’s bunker.

            These are just some of the anecdotes being told by Muscovites that journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova has assembled after the drone incident (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45738/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       Russians aren’t impressed by Maria Lvova-Belova’s suggestion that she can’t be a war criminal because she is a mother. That excuse, offered by the Russian commission for children’s rights, is too close to the one offered by Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. She too was a mother but was convicted of crimes against humanity and then hanged herself.

·       Russians can freely celebrate World Press Freedom Day and then freely present themselves for incarceration.

·       Russian Railways is coming up with ever more euphemisms to report how partisans are derailing trains. It can’t admit the truth, but it can’t cover it up either.

·       Putin’s special military operation was launched to make Russians safer. In one sense, it has: now there are so many facilities burning in Russia at night that it is far easier to walk about.

·       The Russian “butterfly effect” is when you get on a tram in Mariupol and the whole train derails in Bryansk.