Brutal Consolation

In keeping with the new spirit of intermafiosal détente, Putinite party officials in Murmansk may have attained near-Trumpsterian levels of tact and good taste by presenting meat-grinders to the mothers of soldiers killed in the Ukraine war. In Russian as in English, the term evokes a military tactic much favoured by Douglas Haig at the Somme and Third Ypres and by Mr Churchill's brother-in-arms Stalin during the Great Patriotic War: namely throwing live flesh at the enemy until the latter's ammunition runs out. Responding to online outrage at the apparent faux pas, the party claimed that one of the ladies had asked for the utensil on the inglorious grounds that she could do with it. In its present morally undeveloped state Russia is presumably unable to offer less utilitarian and more civilised rewards, such as an engraved stone phallus in a public place and video footage of their children's butchers making solemn for a couple of minutes a year.