First the humanitarian aid, as widely reported:
Last night a convoy of 280 KamAz lorries left the town of Narofominsk near Moscow, heading for the distressed eastern provinces of the Ukraine.
They carry 2,000 tonnes of cargo comprised of humanitarian aid for the Ukraine: cereals, sugar, baby food, medicines, sleeping bags and power generators.
The lorries are all military vehicles; all KamAz lorries commissioned by the Russian army are armoured; ergo the 280 humanitarian lorries are armoured too.
The armoured humanitarian lorries were loaded by soldiers of the Taman Guards division. Before that the soldiers had taken two days to repaint the lorries white to make them look more humanitarian and less armoured.
The night before, Col. Putin told my Maoist friend José Manuel Barroso that the convoy was being dispatched by agreement with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Yet the ICRC representative in the Ukraine Ashot Astabatsian swore on his mother’s grave that such an agreement was news to him. Had it been in place, he would have known about it.
Now comes the arithmetic, for the conflicting reports made me whip out my trusted calculator:
The payload of a military KamAz lorry is 11.4 tonnes. Multiplying this specification by the number of lorries, 280, we get 3,192 tonnes.
Subtracting from that product 2,000 tonnes, the declared weight of the humanitarian aid, we obtain 1,192 tonnes. That’s 1,192,000 kilos of payload unaccounted for.
Now the average weight of an AK-74 assault rifle is, depending on the modification, 3 kilos. Dividing 1,192,000 by 3 and multiplying the resulting quotient by the AK’s firing rate of 650 rounds/min, we get enough firepower to wipe out the entire population of the Ukraine in a few long bursts.
Far be it from me to accuse Col. Putin of trying to pull a fast one. After all, he was trained at, and remains loyal to, the KGB, an organisation known for its veracity and commitment to truth.
Moreover, even assuming in a jaundiced mood that the humanitarian convoy does carry 1,192 tonnes of AK-74 assault rifles, this doesn’t necessarily compromise Col. Putin’s stated objective.
The rifles could after all be used for purposes other than wiping out the entire population of the Ukraine.
Hunting, for example, may be instrumental in solving any food crisis, and a hunting version of the AK rifle does exist.
Firing a short burst in the air will keep wolves at bay. These always come out of the woodwork in numbers whenever the country is devastated by war – as the Ukraine is, thanks to the evil plot by the Judaeo-Banderite-EU-CIA fascists, otherwise known as Ukrainians.
Also, if left unloaded, an AK rifle could be used as a tool for hammering, say, tent pegs into the ground or driving nails into walls.
Being a credulous sort, I’d be happy to accept any such explanation, especially if coming from Col. Putin, who’s like George Washington in that he never tells a lie (if one believes his Western admirers, such as Peter Hitchens, and I see no reason not to).
What I find vexing is that no explanation has been offered at all. Nor has it been requested by anyone outside this, admittedly venomous, space.
If a third of the lorries are empty, I’d like to know why. If they aren’t empty, I’d like to know what they are carrying. Is that too much to ask?
There may be many perfectly innocuous explanations for all of this, and Col. Putin could have put forth any of them. Off the top:
- The armoured lorries were repainted white because that’s the colour of the dove of peace, and they are indeed on a humanitarian mission.
- They aren’t loaded to the gunwales to make them more drivable on Russian and Ukrainian roads.
- The stated weight of 2,000 tonnes was inaccurate, and what’s a 1,000,000 kilos here or there among friends?
- Mind your own business, you Anglo-Saxon hireling, if you don’t want to drink Polonium-200 with your tea.
My faith in Col. Putin’s boundless virtue is such that I even don’t mind suggesting such plausible explanations to him.
All he has to do is repeat them in public – and then hire me as his mouthpiece. Since the good colonel never lies, somebody has to do his lying for him.
Why not me? I may not be a natural liar, but at least I know how to make numbers add up.