Kremlin Now Suggests Slowness of Ukraine’s Advance Real Measure of Russia’s Victory, Some Muscovites Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 8 – Eighteen months ago, many Russians felt it was hardly worth invading Ukraine because that country would lose so quickly. Now, with Ukraine fighting back, Kremlin propagandists have encouraged Russians to define victory in a new way: it happens, these spokesmen say, when Ukraine can’t advance any more quickly than it has so far.

            That is just one of the anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova offers in her latest compilation (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/46728/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       The Russian defense ministry says that Ukraine’s drone attacks on Moscow have had the positive impact of reducing rental rates in the city.

·       Putin now says that Ukrainians not Nazis killed Jews in Ukraine. Soon he will say that Hitler was a Ukrainian.

·       Inflation has increased the cost of almost everything in Russia except for human beings.

·       Putin will deserve some kind of international prize for getting NATO to establish a base in Finland only 154 km from Petersburg. But it will hardly be a Nobel Peace Prize.

·       Russians need to begin thinking about a world when leaders of other countries are unwilling to come to Russia and don’t show any respect for the greatest gas station attendant of all time.

·       A sociologist has suggested that after Putin, the new Russian state will create an Order of Foreign Agents for all those classified as such by the current government. Those receiving the award will get special benefits. The person who suggested this has already been classified as a foreign agent.

·       Putin says that Russia’s ill-wishers have provoked the war in Ukraine. He doesn’t acknowledge that he is doing their bidding.