Russian Politician:"Russia has no plans to invade Ukraine...Whatever we hear about the Russian plans is something we hear from the US administration, and Western media"

Like Victim Who Stabs Herself In Face To Garner Sympathy And Attention About Abusive Boyfriend

Note to readers: This was a Facebook post written by Vladimir Golstein, Dept of Slavic Studies, Brown University, a few days ago:

There is a Well-Known Turkish Proverb, recently made even more famous by Erdogan's anger at the journalist who used it:

"When You Bring A Clown into A Palace, You Don't Turn Him Into A King; You Turn Palace Into A Circus."

A case in point: Ukraine. The former clown brought into Presidency, has now turned not just his government, and not just his country, but the whole world into a circus.

He puts on a military uniform in the hope of entertaining people, but gullible Americans, who always had difficulties telling apart shows from reality, and circus from government, are screaming bloody war, Russian invasion, and whip everyone into a frenzy to such a degree, that a clown himself has to say: relax, that's only a show. It is not happening.

What do you mean, it is not happening. We saw it on TV, scream the Americans, and began to bully Germans and French and the rest of the world into some sort of threat-fest and sanction-mania.

Their own court jester, Psaki, declares that anyone questioning this madness is a Russian stooge, including members of Congress, while asserting that it is American sacred duty to protect its eastward neighbors. By which she does not mean fishes or whales, but the performers in Kiev.

NPR sends to Kiev their international correspondent, Mary Louise Kelly, who imagines that she knows how to speak French and therefore hopes to understand Russian and Ukrainian, and who therefore interviews endless Olehs and Halinas, who refuse to give her their last names, but nevertheless assure her that they are ready to keep the show going, and even take on the road, to the UN and major European capitals. And why not? Ever since the Romans, it paid to have a circus handy.

In the comments you'll find the link to the latest discussion of all sorts of circus performers, professional, amateurish, demented or even Oxford educated. Yet, as Tolstoy would say, "they are entertaining, but I am not laughing."

—Vladimir Golstein