April 5th, 2022
Ukrainian invasion now better understood
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine now entering the 6th week, President Vlad Putin is now under new financial pressures. S&P has lowered Russia’s bond rating to junk status, and proclaimed that default is imminent, with virtually no prospect of recovery. The Russian economy is already on the ropes due to the stack of sanctions leveled upon them. The Russian ruble has become almost worthless.
Critics have wondered why Putin was motivated to take military action on Ukraine, given the financial disaster he has plummeted his country into. Some pundits have speculated that it was his fear that Ukraine was continually leaning toward becoming a Western economy, and Putin just could not stomach that proposition. Others have suggested that reason was too idiotic, and there must be a more logical reason.
Bizarreville Moon News has gotten information from Moscow sources that Putin’s real reason was far simpler. Vlad has a hankering for a certain Ukranian Pilsner brewed in Kyiv, and he had commissioned a modern-day Smokey & the Bandit twosome to go grab a truckload and bring him the suds pronto. Unfortunately, Smokey won this particular episode. The truck was stopped in Donbas and forced to return the brew to Kyiv. Vlad’s thirst remained unquenched, and this angered the dictator, prompting him to make the invasion. He particularly wanted to punish the people in Donbas, where the stop was made. Some of his non-beer drinking Central Committee members argued that this incident did not merit such a drastic response; obviously those members were sent to Gulags in Siberia.
Secret negotiations continue to resolve the Pilsner conflict, but at this point, Ukrainians are unwilling to share their beer with the vodka crowd in Russia.
Disclaimer: all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, but are often close to being true.