SHACK ATTACK?

Check out Vladimir Putin’s summer home on the Black Sea coast. As you can see, it’s quite the shack. You wouldn’t want to get all caught up in a game of hide and go-seek in this place or they may never find you. But then again, it’s Russia, and people disappear all the time.

So, how does the president of Russia manage such a cottage on his meagre salary? Was Vladdy always a good little saver, squirrelling rubles away in empty vodka jars since he was a kid? Some sound investments in the financial markets? Uncanny saavy when it comes to turning rubles into more rubles, then of course into dollars? I mean, seriously, how does this man get all his money?

Well, he did it the old-fashioned way. He stole it.

Yes, the rider of bears and wrestler of alligators is equally adept at the art of thievery, and on a grand scale. His victim is no less than Mother Russia herself, and he’s had his hand in her purse ever since he sleazed into power over thirty years ago. He’s also enriched many of his cohorts and those he perceives to be important to his hold on power, and there’s the rise of the oligarchs, those Russian fat-cats who scramble all over themselves to build the biggest, most ostentatious yacht.

RUSSIA = KLEPTOCRACY

So while the ordinary Russians he professes to love so much go to bed cold with rumbling stomachs, he heads down to the Black Sea to kick back and figure out who he’s going to assassinate next with a radio-active lightbulb or something.

This palace is one of the main reasons Alexei Navalny is still in jail. Navalny used to point to it as evidence of Putin’s corruption before the big (little actually) guy tried to kill him with polonium-210 a couple years back. That was Navalny’s big mistake: shouting in public that Putin was a crook. He got ten years for insulting the President of Russia, and another ten for divulging a state secret. I’m kidding there, but I think he’s got 9 years left to serve on his trumped- up charges and he’s been treated less than ideally.

Remember how Ukraine caused all sorts of consternation in Russia by effectively using drones to attack Russian air bases deep inside Russia? Imagine if they took a couple of these things and flew them off to Putin’s Palace, popping them off right there in the goddamned courtyard?

Jesus, just to see the man’s face! That would get his testicles in a knot for sure.

If Ukraine can already hit those air bases, this summer playground is well within range.