Award time: the most ridiculous allegation of the decade

There have been some pretty silly things said on all sides of politics and in most of the countries around the world in the last few years.

But for sheer implausible daftness I don't think any of them match the claim by the Putin regime in Russia about the riot at Dagestan, for which Putin blamed the West, Ukraine after a mob stormed a Russian airport to 'catch' Jews | Reuters.

Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Monday that the riot was the result of a “provocation” orchestrated from outside Russia, with Ukraine playing a “direct and key role”.

Putin himself reportedly made similar allegations at a meeting with security chiefs.

In response, Pinchas Goldschmidt, who served as the chief rabbi of Moscow for nearly 30 years until he left the country last year because of his opposition to the war in Ukraine, commented that,

“In a country where everything is tightly controlled by the government, it is inconceivable that these riots were not instigated or directed by governmental structure.”

Asked about the accusations against the west at a White House briefing, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said:

“Classic Russian rhetoric, when something goes bad in your country, you blame somebody else.”

“The west had nothing to do with this."

And State Department spokesman Matthew Miller earlier called Russian allegations of Ukrainian involvement “absurd”.

Quite. The idea that the West or Ukraine is in a position to stir up mobs in areas a thousands miles away under the control of the Kremlin is too silly for words. I only report it here to demonstrate how utterly divorced from reality the Kremlin's propaganda has become.

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