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A lot of summer vacation plans are about to change, and many children will cry, because Vladimir Putin’s government has just added 500 new names to its list of Americans subject to travel and financial sanctions. This means if these people were planning on experiencing the joy that can only come from visiting such a technologically advanced and vibrant country as Russia, they cannot do that anymore, and now all their plans are ruined.
What’s funny, as many are pointing out, is that while some of the names are people from think tanks Putin doesn’t like, a hilarious number are simply people who upset Donald Trump. Apparently Putin is doing Trump a solid in the only way he can — by banning people from doing business in/with or traveling to a backward shithole they didn’t want to go to anyway.
Examples: former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch is on the list, as is former Trump administration Russia expert Fiona Hill. While both those people played huge roles in Trump’s first impeachment, one can also see why Putin would hate them personally. He has a serious problem with strong women, in general.
But then there are people like New York Attorney General Letitia James, who’s famously investigating the Trump Organization, and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. We’re surprised the Russians forgot to add Fani Willis, the Fulton County DA who may be the next to indict Trump.
They got Special Counsel Jack Smith, though.
Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who rudely refused to find Donald Trump 11,780 votes, is on the list. Seriously, how did Putin forget Fani Willis? Idiot.
Raffensperger has the sads, if this tweet from his deputy Gabriel Sterling is any indication:
They got Rachel Maddow, TAKE THAT, Rachel Maddow! We know she was probably dying to visit one of Russia’s famed resorts or other places with electricity and running water.
Brian Williams and Joe Scarborough are banned and sanctioned. (But not Mika Brzezinski for some reason? OK.)
Everyone named Biden is on the list, as is former president Barack Obama.
Late night talk show hosts such as Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, who make fun of Trump and call him a tiny-handed clownfuck, are on there.
When we saw Kim Deal on the list, we were like yeah, Vladimir Putin would hate the Breeders and the Pixies, because he’s a fuckin’ nerd and a loser. But it’s a different Kim Deal.
Oh here’s one: Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed invading domestic terrorist Ashli Babbitt on January 6. Or as the Russian foreign ministry puts it, “the police officer who killed Ashley Babbit [sic] during the so-called. ‘Assault on the Capitol.'” They can’t bother to learn how to spell her name correctly, but they can defend the domestic terrorist attack Trump incited.
Indeed, here is how the Russian foreign ministry sets that up
Among them are not only “significant” figures, including former US President B. Obama, but also current leaders of various levels of executive power, ex-officials like the White House curator for combating “Russian disinformation” N. Yankovich, who were first elected at the November elections-2022, senators and congressmen, experts and employees of “analytical” centers involved in the spread of Russophobic attitudes and fakes, as well as the heads of military-industrial complex companies that supply weapons to the regime in Kiev [sic] . The attached “list-500” also includes those in government and law enforcement agencies who are directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called. Storming the Capitol.
Okeydoke.
Let’s see, who else?
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper. The governors of Colorado and Pennsylvania, respectively, Jared Polis, and Josh Shapiro.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders for some reason. No goddamn idea. There’s a rumor Ron DeSantis wants to tap her as his running mate, though, so maybe Putin and Trump are just that petty.
So it’s just a whole list. As Peter Baker explains in the New York Times, this is in direct retaliation to the United States’s latest targeted sanctions against Russia, which appear to be extensive. On the other hand, Russia doesn’t have anything the United States really wants, so Jimmy Kimmel is hereby prohibited from going to Moscow to see the Ferris wheel they installed, which immediately broke.
If you want to see if you are banned from entering Russia, you may check the full list here. We were hoping we were banned, but we guess we are just not famous enough.
Oh well. We guess we’ll just have to continue making sure that godforsaken country is never in our travel plans on our own.
We’ll go to Ukraine, though, sometime after they’ve won the war they didn’t ask for, when Ukraine says it’s ready for tourists and their money. We bet Crimea will be beautiful once Ukraine takes it back once and for all.
In what is surely unrelated news, a 46-year-old Russian government minister has reportedly died suddenly and mysteriously after criticizing Russia’s failing genocidal war against Ukraine. He called it a “fascist invasion.”
Yeah, it’d be a real bummer to be banned from the country Putin has made. You betcha.
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
I would like a BlueSky invite.
I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@evanhurst@newsie.social) and at Post!
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