Russia: Noodles on ears in Putin’s speech: Politicians face problems

A Russian regional politician faces consequences for a fun and protest action during the speech to the nation by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin.

After the speech, the communist MP Mikhail Abdalkin from the Samara region published a video on YouTube showing him sitting in front of his computer and listening to Putin with spaghetti hanging from his ears. In Russian there is an expression “hanging noodles on one’s ears”, which means something like: being lied to.

“Great performance”

Abdalkin also published the 30-second clip on the Russian social media platform Vkontakte – and wrote there, obviously with a certain irony: “Full support, I completely agree, great performance.” In an interview, a spokesman for the Communist Party called Abdalkin’s actions “stupid” and announced that the incident would be dealt with within the party.

The Russian Communist Party is actually considered to be loyal to the Kremlin. Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, for example, praised the “determination” of Putin’s speech. Especially in the regions of the largest country in the world in terms of area, politicians who do not belong to the Kremlin party United Russia occasionally make critical remarks. Samara is around 1000 kilometers southeast of Moscow.

Putin delivered his state of the nation address just before the first anniversary of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. During the nearly two-hour performance, the 70-year-old Kremlin chief defended the invasion he ordered, claiming that the West had “started the war.” Internationally – but also by the Russian opposition – large parts of the speech were criticized as pure propaganda.

Accordingly, Abdalkin’s pasta satire was well received by some Internet users: many more people like this are needed for change in Russia, one man wrote in the YouTube comments.