We’ve all met some naturally funny people, those who make us laugh even when they aren’t trying to. Russia proves that countries can be like that too.
Three bits of news prove this rare talent. Moving from the ridiculous to the gor blime, the first involves two Russian pranksters nicknamed Vovan and Lexus, who ring foreign dignitaries, pass themselves for someone else (Putin, prime minister of Armenia et al.) and dupe their marks into saying ridiculous things.
The list of their victims includes Elton John, Boris Johnson, Erdogan, Bernie Sanders and many others. The pair are known to be the stand-up extension of the FSB, and the very fact that they easily get all those private phone numbers proves the connection.
This time it was Prince Harry’s turn. Vovan and Lexus, posing as Greta Thunberg and her father, had two long conversations with the prince, making him sound even dumber than God originally made him.
That Harry isn’t the sharpest chisel in the toolbox is seldom denied. But this time he outdid even himself.
Harry readily offered that, because President Trump’s commitment to saving ‘the planet’ is less febrile than Greta’s, he “has blood on his hands”. And the prince was delighted to hear the fake news that Greta is distantly related to the Swedish royal family and thus, at a few removes, to himself.
‘Greta’ then suggested that her cause could be advanced by a dynastic marriage. One candidate for such nuptials was Prince George, Harry’s nephew. Harry offered his help in making future arrangements with enough alacrity to suggest that perhaps starting a matchmaking service may be on his extensive list of business opportunities.
Now, I haven’t heard the tapes yet, so I can’t imagine how a thirtyish man can impersonate a teenaged girl, but they train them well at the FSB. Then again, Harry probably doesn’t take a lot of duping.
The next news items aren’t immediately funny, but there’s a comic payoff down the road, about which later.
First, a trial is under way in the Hague of four Putin thugs directly responsible for the 2014 downing of Malaysian Flight MH 17 over the Ukraine, which killed all 298 people onboard.
The trial is held in absentia, for the defendants neglected to turn up, as everyone knew they would. In an equally obvious but less widely predicted development, all the witnesses in the trial have to remain anonymous because there’s evidence that Putin’s death squads are trying to track them down.
That approach to legal procedure isn’t new, but traditionally it has been associated with crime syndicates both rather smaller than Putin’s Russia and lacking the firepower that only nuclear weapons can provide.
Now, unlike old soldiers, Mafia godfathers never fade away. They do die though, but until that demise they stay put. The next news item shows that in this too Putin follows the same pattern.
The Russian situation stipulates only so many presidential terms, and Putin’s last is set to expire in 2024. However, a few years ago parliamentary speaker Vyacheslav Volodin offered a simple formula making that highly undesirable.
“If there is Putin,” he said, “there’s Russia. No Putin, no Russia.” Hence it would be Russia expiring in 2024, not just Vlad’s tenure. And Putin himself once extended the formula by adding that if Russia goes so will the whole world.
In other words, a cataclysmic event with global implications is on the cards, and it has to be preempted at all cost. The solution came to the Duma by a serendipity reminiscent of Archimedes in his bath.
If the old constitution spells the end of Putin, Russia and the world, it should be replaced with a new one, thereby resetting the timer and giving Vlad two more terms to last until 2036, when he will be 83.
The actual eureka moment was provided by Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space and now an MP. “Comrades,” she said, “why are we tying ourselves in knots? Since we can’t survive without Putin, we must either remove all limitations on the number of presidential terms or to make it possible for the acting president to be re-elected in accordance with the new constitution.”
So moved, so voted – so to be rubber-stamped by the constitutional court. Russia has tossed aside the last pretence of democracy and appointed the KGB colonel the supreme ruler for life. That means that the malignant sore on the world’s body will continue to fester, with us teetering on the edge of deadly conflict for as long as Vlad lives, and he’s in rude health.
So what’s so funny about this, I hear you ask. Where’s the humour in any of the three items? Thought you’d want to know.
None of this is funny in itself, not even Harry’s idiocy so brutally exposed or rather confirmed. Not the Hague trial, where the gangster regime will get a mild slap at best and won’t admit its guilt. And certainly not the lifelong entrenchment of the world’s most dangerous dictator openly waging war on the West.
The comedy will be provided by the repulsive sight of Putin stooges in the West bending over backwards in their attempts to justify an evil that doesn’t even bother to justify itself any longer. As they surely will.
“’If there is Putin,’ he said, ‘there’s Russia. No Putin, no Russia.’”
“Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler”??
Stalin was boss for about thirty years? Putin getting close to that mark now.