Free Republic

Russian authorities have closely monitored the public reaction to fake reports of the death of Vladimir Putin and may punish those who praised the demise of the Russian president, according to Ukrainian intelligence. Andrii Yusov, a representative of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, was responding to the claims emerging last week that Putin had died after a cardiac arrest and that those in his inner circle were planning a body double to replace him... In what could have a plot line borrowed from the 2017 film The Death of Stalin, which satirizes the indecision among the inner circle of the former...

Vladimir Putin's enemies are keeping a close eye on a bird in pointe shoes, because a broadcast of "Swan Lake" may reveal his demise. -snip- First, a bit of history about why so many historians and Eastern Europeans took to Twitter to pray for Swan Lake's swift appearance. To see dancing swans is, to use @asiktspolitruk's words, "the equivalent of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel's chimney in Rome announcing a new Pope." The broadcast would indicate that the end of Vladimir Putin was near. When Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, state-run television broadcast a full-length Swan Lake in lieu...