NATO has Decided Putin’s Desk is Now So Long It can Serve as an Aircraft Carrier, Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – At a time when Russia’s only aircraft carrier seems to be under permanent repair, Russians are taking heart from what some of them say is NATO’s conclusion that Putin has made his desk so long to separate himself from others that planes can take off and land on it.

            That is just one of the anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova offers in her latest collection (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45185/-). Among the best or at least most instructive about what Russians are currently thinking are the following:

·       Support for Putin in the Russian population as a whole is now more than 79 percent, but that is nothing, Russians says. Support for him among members of the Russian Guard is more than 100 percent.

·       Now that Putin is travelling more and more by train, Russian officials are doing their best to make the areas he passes through look better, building alpine chalets long the line and dressing up local drunks as prosperous burghers.

·       Does Putin dream about how Hussein, Gaddafi, Ceaucescu, and Milosevic met their ends? And if he does, how does he manage to stay asleep?

·       An applicant for the Russian civil service is asked when he first thought about joining. He replies “when I realized I wasn’t good for anything else?”

·       A Russian applies to work as a Duma deputy. What are you, some kind of a moroan? he’s asked. He responds with his own question: “is that a prerequisite?”

·       As a result of the law banning foreign words in Russia, there is no more inflation in that country.

·       When European officials said that the West should applaud Zelensky less but send him more weapons, Moscow media reported only that they had advised the West not to applaud the Ukrainian leader.

·       The real theses of Putin’s speech have been leaked. They include the following lines: “Genghis Khan attacked the whole world so that the whole world would not attack Mongolia. Alexander the Great began a campaign in India so that India would not invade Northern Greece. Columbus conquered the Indians so that the Indians would not conquer Europe and turn Europeans into slaves.