Open letter to birthday boy

Dear Vlad,

You know how it is: you get caught up in the daily grind and let even historical landmarks slip out of your mind.

That’s me, today. I desperately wanted to be the first to wish you a happy 70^th, but then I remembered I had an appointment to have my toenails clipped. By the time I got home, that sycophant Kim had beaten me to it.

So here are my belated good wishes, Vlad. Many happy returns – certainly enough for you not to miss that first case hearing at the Hague. You like to be the star of the show, don’t you? That’ll be your golden moment.

I know the stories of your ill health have been concocted at the FSB headquarters. That’s what I call an op, and a stroke of genius it is too. Cancer, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia – all to scare those Western paedos, homos and transsexuals out of their wits.

Now the paedos are all writing that Putin is dying and he doesn’t mind taking the whole world with him. Meanwhile, you are in rude health, which should last long enough for that Hague event.

Vlad, travel restrictions being what they are, I can’t pop over to give you a hug in person. But, if I may, as an old adman I’d like to offer some friendly advice on your image. Your KGB colleagues are expert at bumping people off, but their PR skills aren’t up to scratch.

If they were better at it, you’d be coming across as, well, perhaps not a Mahatma Gandhi, but at least as a Simon Bolivar, the great liberator. As it is, your detractors, all those homo transsexuals, have a free hand in comparing you to, well, you-know-whom – and not in his heyday either.

Yes, I know you can have anyone who calls you ‘Putler’ whacked. But that’s inside Russia, where your detractors no longer are. Thousands of them have fled for their lives and now they are spreading their venom all over Europe. You must rip their sting out by paying more attention to PR.

Take your living quarters, for example. You want to live in a bunker, which is your privilege. But must the whole world know about this?

By all means, stay in that concrete hole, but have your lads bang out press releases, complete with photographs of you at your desk in the Kremlin, toiling away like what you call a “galley slave”. They know how to use Photoshop, don’t they?

Then there’s this stuff with the “Russian world”, bringing under Moscow’s aegis everyone who has ever uttered a Russian word in his life. (Let’s not forget the million Russian speakers in the US, half of them in New York — they are all gagging for it.) Again, good idea, rotten execution.

Replace ‘Russian’ with ‘German’, and you-know-who said exactly the same things. German speakers being persecuted in Poland and Czechoslovakia, which amounts to genocide; traditional German territories occupied by infidels; German culture outlawed – that sort of thing.

No one can argue against your claims, and certainly not I (you know where I live). It’s the wording that leaves a hole that your enemies can drive an Abrams tank through. And oh, by the way, if you must talk about the Russian Word, don’t quote the fascist philosopher Ilyin — that leaves an opening. Quote Solzhenitsyn instead. He said all the same things late in life, but at least he was a Nobel winner.

Speaking of wording, tell your lads not to scream publicly “One country, one leader, one victory!”. It’s too close for comfort to Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. May I suggest “One Russia, one Vlad”? Or, “They take out, we Putin”? Anything, other than that slogan.

And speaking of them, those evil Anglo-Saxons. Do you realise that a similar replacement exercise gives even more ammunition to Russophobe vermin? Where you say “Anglo-Saxons”, you-know-who said “Jews”. Everything else is the same, word for word. Let’s try to phrase more subtly, shall we?

The same goes for your frequent references to the innate superiority of the Russians over everyone else. No problem with the idea itself – anyone who has ever been anywhere near a Russian block of communal flats and its local boozer will know you are right.

It’s just that, next time you want to say something like that, replace the word “Russian” with “Aryan” and see if it sounds exactly like something you-know-who used to say. If it does, change the wording.

Also, you really want to downplay the parallels between the Anschluss and your Special Military Operation. Actually, you are moving in the right direction already.

When the Austrians tried to call a referendum on independence, you-know-who first demanded they desist and, after they refused, sent his troops in. You did it much better: troops first, referendum second.

But those videos of AK-toting Russian soldiers taking ballot boxes to people’s flats and then making sure they voted correctly are bad PR. A much better move would have been to dispense with voting altogether and then announce it had taken place, with you scoring the requisite 99 per cent.

Now we are on the subject of your soldiers, you’ve missed a PR trick there. You see, you-know-who’s troops occupied the same territory in 1941, and the locals heard all sorts of horror stories from their parents and grandparents.

Then your lads arrive, and they do all the same things: indiscriminate bombing, mass executions, looting, rape, torture, mass graves filled with trussed up corpses. Hey, war is war, and boys will be boys, we all know that. But you know what those Anglo-Saxon paedos are making of the pictures coming out of the Ukraine.

You-know-who had it easy, there was no Internet at the time. Now any Russophobe with a smartphone can cast aspersion on the Special Military Operation – and draw all the same disgusting parallels. Tell your lads to do all the same things, but discreetly. I’d start by knocking out all the mobile phone masts – surely your bombers can manage that.

I do apologise about sounding critical. You know it’s only because I have your best interests at heart. If your friends don’t point out your resemblance to you-know-whom, you know your enemies will. Throw the first punch, as you once described your philosophy of life.

Anyway, Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! – oops, sorry. I mean “all best wishes on your birthday”. And if you see old Adolf before I do, tell him I said hello.

Yours as ever,

Alex