One of the elementary mistakes that military bureaucrats make when they censor the press and then dish out their own version of events is that the results are so poor that they meet with contempt even by the most loyal patriot. In the hardline Vzglyad newspaper which has always relied upon the “patriot” for support, readers’ comments on subjects like Ukraine before the war used to be even more extreme that the articles they were reading. One thing they cannot stand is amateurism.

Having seen blistering comments via the website of the foreign intelligence service (SVR) levelled at the feeble attempt to justify the war by its chief, Naryshkin, one now sees “disgusted” comments from readers of Vzglyad when presented online with a tiny video of special forces, faces blanked out, sitting in a helicopter overflying Ukraine and then disembarking the machine into a field.

It can be summed up in the words of one reader as “theatrical nonsense.” A straw in the wind, perhaps, at the damaging war against Ukrainians waged with such incompetence.