I am only sharing this news flash from RBC with you because of the fabulous photo that accompanied it on RBC’s Facebook news feed, and the way it illustrates the article’s point—sideways, as it were.
“‘It is necessary to remain calm,’ the Russian Foreign Ministry said after North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb. The ministry called for a return to dialogue as ‘the only possible way of comprehensively settling the Korean Peninsula’s problems.'”
That sounds great albeit weirdly kumbayaish from folks whose usual idea of a “comprehensive settlement” is invasion and occupation of a peaceful neighboring country, aiding and abetting a bloody Arab tyrant in crushing a popular revolution, sowing racist and Islamophobic mayhem throughout the world via fake news and bots, especially after the meltdown in Charlottesville, messing with elections in other countries, including plans to assassinate one of the candidates, the incumbent PM, ruthlessly and routinely crushing dissent and protest in their own country, and implicitly declaring anti-Americanism the official state ideology not because they thought it would go down well with the rank and file, or because they themselves hate America so much (it doesn’t, and they don’t), but because it was the only way they could think of keeping Putin in the Kremlin for another six years.
Remember, comrades: he’s already been in the Kremlin for eighteen years.
But the photo is terrific. The people in it are not calm. They could not care less about anything.
Or if they do care, they are not going to let on to it whilst walking down the street in the middle of Moscow.
In any case, RBC originally ran this photo in April of this year to accompany an article about how my friends at Mediazona were suing the Foreign Ministry for refusing to reply to its written request for information about contacts between Russian diplomats in the US and members of the Trump presidential campaign.
What goes around comes around, so just step sideways. TRR
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The Russian Reader 