Russian propaganda had never been too subtle but as the war goes, it seems to be reaching the new lows. This fragment with an animated blue and yellow pig walking in the studio had been just aired in the state TV "Rossiya 1" channel, to which even one of the Russian political experts Dmitriev (ardent supporter of the war, just to be clear) responded disgusted with a comment that "the 'Black Mirror' series becomes reality, what's next - prime minister having se with a pig live on TV?" (reference to the [The National Anthem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_(Black_Mirror) episode). Russian state propaganda does have a thing for the even-toed animal - there's a whole animated series called "Piglet in a faint" (Russian: СВО — Свинка в обмороке) which presents Ukraine as a rather cognitively limited animal, which, for the sake of less perceptive audience, is clearly stamped with the Ukrainian flag and a swastika, and constantly conspires to annoy the patient, kind bear, but, of course, always gets punished. It has been a tradition of Russian culture to present the countries it considers its colonies as simpletons and red necks (Russian: selyuki) which are ruled from the West, but in its typical lack of consistence, when suitable, Russian media don't hesitate to present Ukraine as a nefarious ruler of the world, who stands behind every single catastrophic event out there. One intellectual achievement that is apparently organically unavailable to Russians is to see their neighbours as sovereign countries, having their own culture, languages and state interests, not always sharing the the idea currently settled in the mind of the tsar at Kremlin.