There is such an artifact, a winged expression falsely attributed to Saltykov-Shchedrin: “If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and they ask me what is happening in Russia now, I will answer: they drink and steal”.
In reality, it is much worse: they kill and lie. They kill and then blame the victims, declaring them criminals and themselves literally righteous saints.
The Russian authorities have always behaved this way. Even under the praised Yeltsin and the “democrats” in the 90s.
A friend of my youth, Nizhny Novgorod human rights activist Stas Dmitrievsky, recalls: “The worst thing for me in January 1995 in Grozny was to sit in the basement of a house on Minutka, which was being relentlessly pounded by Russian Grad and hit by Russian bombs, and (there was a strange bonus) to listen to Radio “Rossiya”. The radio told us that the Chechens were bombing themselves in order to discredit the Russian constitutional order and the Russian army, which was heroically leading it”.
Ring any bells?
