Dead Drop: March 8

NOW, THEY TELL US: Remember right before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (to distinguish it from the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine) when Kremlin officials were saying there was no invasion imminent and that their troops were just conducting military exercises? And then after that when they said this “special military operation” was just about protecting some Russian-speaking people living along the border of Russia and Ukraine?  Well, that was then.  Now Dmitry Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and a former Russian president, is telling his countrymen that all of Ukraine is certainly Russian and that the so-called Ukrainian leaders are brainwashing their own people to think otherwise. In a video captured by Russia Media Monitor Julia Davis, Medvedev gleefully quotes Vladimir Putin as saying that “Russia’s borders don’t end anywhere”. Wearing a spiffy Nehru jacket and reading from a tablet, he blamed the current unpleasantness on the Americans saying, “Wherever there are Yankees, expect trouble.”

MORE DEAD AND MISSING RUSSIANS:  For the past couple editions of the Dead Drop, we’ve had items on Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov who appears to have been murdered by Putin henchmen in Spain. A recent Wall Street Journal article focused on the whole range of Russian “businessmen, bureaucrats and political figures” who have turned up dead since the invasion. There have been mysterious deaths in London, Puerto Rico, Cuba and elsewhere. Putin is known for holding a particular animus toward those he sees as traitors. The WSJ cites a time when Putin was asked at a press conference if he planned to hunt down defectors to which he responded: “Whatever they got in return, those thirty pieces of silver, they will choke on them.” According to the Journal, the Ukrainian tradecraft protecting Kuzminov might have left a little to be desired. When the Russian pilot decided he wanted to leave Ukraine for Spain, he was reportedly given a Ukrainian passport with the pseudonym Shevchenko – the name of the founding father of Ukrainian identity. It was like giving him an American passport with the last name: “Washington.”