A Baker’s Dozen of New Anecdotes from Putin’s Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 3 – The jokes people tell one another about the world around them are often a better indicator of what they really think than are their declarations to pollsters or their votes in elections. Below is a Baker’s dozen of new anecdotes from Russia (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/40371/-):

·         Because the poor rather than the well off are his biggest supporters, Vladimir Putin has a vested interest in ensuring that the number of those in poverty increase as much as possible.

·         A Russian observes that some people are dying from the coronavirus who never died before.

·         The governor of Saratov showed just how out of touch he is when in response to peasants saying they now have to pay 150 rubles for a kilogram of carrots, he asked “is that a lot or a little?”

·         When Putin opened a new railway tunnel on the BAM, he was asked whether he gave permission for its use. The Kremlin leader said he did. That’s fortunate, Russians say. Otherwise, it would have meant they had spent five years digging it for nothing.

·         For 20 years Russian idiots have said that without Putin things would be still worse. But with Putin they are getting worse and worse. Still the idiots are afraid that things will get worse without him.

·         Another Putin triumph: he has made Gazprom profitable.

·         Russians have never lived as badly as they do with Biden as president. They say they want Obama back.

·         What is the Russian middle class? One Russian asks. He is told that it consists of people who live like the average unemployed American who has had half of his unemployment compensation taken away.

·         Putin reflects that he earlier promised not to raise the pension age but only because then he didn’t have a bunker in which he could live without fear of attack.

·         Go intro any state institution now and no matter how small, you’ll find “a microscopic Putin” who live the Russian president can’t be held accountable for his actions.

·         Clear evidence that covid infections leave their victims with diminished mental capacities can be seen in Russian officials, many of whom have had the disease.

·         For a Russian doctor making 20,000 rubles a month to feel good about things, the Kremlin has decided, all that is necessary is for several crooks who have 300 million dollars in accounts and villas on Lake Como to tell him that everything is wonderful.

·         Russian parents have been advised to give their children some new names. Among them are CrimeaisOurs, Putislav, Kremlemir, Gazpromiya, and First Channel.