Pro-Kremlin Telegram Channels Feature Clip showing Russian Air Defense Shooting Down Santa Claus and His Sleigh

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 26 – Pro-Kremlin telegram channels featured a video clip showing Russian air defense forces shooting down Santa Claus and his sleigh because he was supposedly carrying NATO rockets. In response, Father Frost, the Russian counterpart to Santa Claus, says “Good! We don’t need any kind of foreign stuff flying above our heads.”
    The clip (t.me/dimsmirnov175/87047 described at themoscowtimes.com/2024/12/27/pro-kremlin-media-share-video-showing-russian-missile-shooting-down-santas-sleigh-a87472) was especially in appropriate because it came on the heels of the Russian shooting down of an Azerbaijani airliner.
    But what has become the eternal conflict of the Western Santa Claus and the Russian Father Frost was larger than that this year in Russia. Kirill Kabanov, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council, lashed out at Moscow Mufti Ildar Alyautdinov for calling on children to pray to God for their needs rather than to invented characters like Father Frost (sova-center.ru/religion/news/amusing-incidents/2024/12/d50856/).
    And in Irbit in Sverdlovsk Oblast, local communists complained when the authorities there dressed up a Lenin statue to look like Father Frost. The authorities immediately said they hadn’t wanted to offend anyone but then quickly took down the costume. Presumably the communists are pleased.
    While the SOVA monitoring center reported these cases under the rubric of “amusing incidents,” which from one perspective of course they were, they are an indication of just how sensitive Russians are about such things and how even what might appear to most as a small thing can cause real problems for the authorities.