Russians Fear Being Tried as Putin’s Accomplices for War Crimes in Ukraine, New Anecdote Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 28 – Russians are waiting “with bated breath” the possibility that if Vladimir Putin is ultimately brought before an international tribunal for war crimes, they will be put in the dock alongside him, according to one of the anecdotes now circulating in Russia about the war in Ukraine.

            As with many Russian anecdotes, these are often far from funny; but collectively they do provide a window into the thinking of people in that country on issues like Putin’s war in Ukraine about which it is dangerous to express any view except one that echoes that of the Kremlin.

            In two new collections of the stories Russians are telling each other, Moscow journalist Tatiana Pushkaryova offers some anecdotes that are funny and others that are simply telling (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/42201/- and  publizist.ru/blogs/107374/42170/-). Among the best are the following:

·       Russians should stop worrying about the declining rate of exchange between the ruble and foreign currencies. Soon, people say, they won’t have any of either and will thus exist on the basis of barter alone, exchanging matches for salt, for example.

 

·       China won’t desert Russia, but it is a matter of interest, how much Russian oil and gas Beijing will purchase at reduced prices that China will insist upon.

 

·       The Russian authorities have banned the use of the word “war” to describe what is going on in Ukraine, but regardless of what one calls it, the nature of what is occurring doesn’t change.

 

·       Kyiv was able to hold out against the Germans for six weeks in 1941. How long will it be able to do so against the Russians in 2022?

 

·       Moscow has banned a song from World War II about the German attack on the USSR because many younger people will assume it is about current events and that it celebrates Ukrainian resistance now.

 

·       The nation best pleased with Putin’s attack on Ukraine, Russian says, is the German. As a result, people will stop talking about Hitler.

 

·       Remember the good old days before the invasion when the only things Russians had to worry about was doping at the Olympics and the coronavirus pandemic?

 

·       Some Duma deputies want to confiscate the savings of Russia to finance the war; the problem is no Russia has any.

 

·       Pro-Kremlin television experts are advising Russians not to convert their rubles into dollars but instead to invest in Russian companies. As a result, Russians know that they must do exactly the opposite.

 

·       Putin is a real magician. By invading Ukraine, he has succeeded in getting Russians instantly to forget about the pandemic.

 

·       In a country which lost more people in World War II than any other, calls for no war are now criminalized as extremism.

 

·       The possible entrance of Sweden and Finland into NATO requires a Russian response, the foreign ministry says. “Apparently, they too will have to be liberated from the Nazis or perhaps from the Vikings, who pestered our Kievan Rus with their constant raids.”

 

·       The EU has announced that it is freezing the accounts of Putin and Lavrov. Putin’s we are told amount only to a Russian car and apartments in St. Petersburg. Either the Europeans have been misinformed; or we have.