A person's name was added to Russia's stop list, a growing roster of undesirable elements banned from entering the federation. The foreign ministry framed the move as retaliation for London's weapons support to Kyiv while also targeting perceived spreaders of anti-Russia narratives. The designation followed characterisations of Putin as a venal despot whose unprovoked attack on Ukraine was strategically ill-conceived and murderous. The sanctions statement displayed bombastic menace typical of capricious, vindictive bureaucracy with Soviet-era resonances. The comparison to Gogol's The Government Inspector links deference to dysfunctional autocracy with grotesque social deformation and public self-censorship.
The phrase sprang to mind last week when I learned that a 21st-century government inspector is displeased with things I have written about Vladimir Putin and his imperial war against Ukraine the land of Gogol's birth. This I know because my name has been added to the stop list, a growing roster of undesirable elements politicians, journalists, charity workers, consultants banned from entering the Russian federation.
Since I'm not an arms dealer, my inclusion on the list must be for the subsidiary offence of spreading anti-Russia narratives. Presumably, that relates to my characterisation of Putin as a venal despot and ideological crackpot, whose unprovoked attack on Ukraine was as strategically ill-conceived as it was murderous. I can see why the Kremlin's inspectorate of media narratives might recoil from the sight of such blood-soaked crookedness, but like the proverb says, that's not the mirror's fault.
The statement of sanctions is sinister and absurd. It is written with the combination of bombast and menace that Russians recognise as the idiom of capricious, vindictive bureaucracy with deep roots. It is familiar to generations that grew up in the Soviet Union, steeped in the self-satirising pomp of a thin-skinned power that you can't take seriously in private but are careful not to ridicule in public.
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