Having Heard Even They May be Charged with War Crimes, Kremlin Janitors are Quitting in Droves, Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 2 – Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia Today, recently remarked that plans to create a international tribunal to bring those guilty of war crimes to just are so broad that, “if we manage to lose the war, the Hague will be expecting janitors who sweep the streets behind the Kremlin walls.” In response, Russians say, these janitors are quitting their jobs.

            This is just one of the jokes and anecdotes Muscovites are now telling each other that reflect how they view what is going on. They have been collected by journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/44559/-). Among the best of the rest in recent days are the following;

·       Alyaksandr Lukashenka has only one goal – to outlive Putin physically and politically in order to be able to spit on his him for everything he has suffered just as he did on Yeltsin after that “great friend and comrade” of the Belarusian leader did after the first Russian president died.

·       Russian investigators are calling for a rewrite of the Nutcracker ballet because they have concluded that the presence of the Mouse King shows that those putting on this seasonable favorite want to carry out a color revolution in Russia.

·       Russia has 425 times more territory than the Netherlands but exports only one-third as much by value, yet another reason Moscow has to annex more land.

·       Kadyrov has awarded his daughter with the Order of Kadyrov named for his father, but the Chechen leader has not taken the ultimate step of creating a Kadyrov Order referring to himself and then awarding it to himself.

·       The Kremlin is now refusing to comment on Rusisa’s economic decline because in the words of its spokesman, “the economy is an alien Russophobic concept, invented in the LGBT-loving, rotting and stinking West.”

·       Russians who are upset about Solovyev’s aggressive language should reflect on how they might react if they too had lost a villa on Italy’s Lake Como.

·       Russians are wondering whether tank traps their forces are setting up in Ukraine will work any better or last any longer than seasonal barriers on the sidewalks in their cities.

·       Since the start of 2022, Putin seven times has called for incomes of Russians to go up but still they fall, yet another outsider who will be punished. Also likely to be published as slum dwellers. Putin has ordered them to leave the slums but somehow they keep sneaking back in.