So Many Liberals have Emigrated that Kremlin Now Faces Problems in Finding Opponents for Its TV Shows, Russians Joke

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 30 – Putin’s war in Ukraine has created another problem for Moscow: so many liberals have fed the country that state television is finding it hard to round up even a few to serve as foils for the station’s nationalist and imperialist hosts to lambast, Russians are now joking. “Someone,” they say, must remain to work as a liberal in Putin’s Russia.”

            That is just one of the Russian anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova offers in her latest collection of what people in that country are laughing about (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/42826/1945-2). Other noteworthy examples of the voice of the people offered in this form include:

·       The FSB general convicted of diverting funds intended for construction in the Arctic build a palatial home for himself in occupied Crimea is just following the historical interest of Russians in gaining access to warm seas. That pull is so strong that neither the possibilities of the Arctic nor the power of the Kremlin can stop it.

·       One needs advanced knowledge to figure out just how the four trillion dollars Moscow has taken in over the last 18 years has been divided up.

·       The Putin regime may have made a mistake in putting up posters for Victory Day listing both 1945 and 2022 because, Russians say, it certainly looks like the Kremlin ruler is trying to take credit for a victory he didn’t win because he was not yet born.

·       Putin says that Ukraine is drowning in corruption, the powers there ignore the people, and people have to spend ever more on communal services. But is he talking only about Ukraine? Isn’t there another country closer by with the same problems?

·       Foreign Minister Lavrov says that Moscow isn’t demanding that Zelensky surrender, only that he cease to resist. That points to a new formula for victory: “Hurrah! We have won; Ukraine has ceased to resist” [rather than ceased to exist] 

·       If as Volodin says, those who supply arms to Ukraine are “military criminals,” does this mean that those who provide weapons to the Russian army are “the righteous”?

·       Russians who suffer so much in their daily lives are encouraged with Kiselyov tells them that a nuclear exchange can leave Great Britain in ruins. That leads Russians who believe him to conclude that they are “great” and “not poor lumpen without prospects for the future.” They are rockets which can’t be stopped an which will kill everyone. They are in short “Russia itself.”