Jady and the Tramp

It is a peculiarity of the Cyrillic alphabet used to write Russian that some letters common in English and other Western languages are missing. As a result, the Russian versions of people’s names often look a bit strange. There is no letter “H,” for instance, so Hitler is known in Russian as Gitler. Russians following the negotiations over Ukraine have become familiar with two important characters on the American side. The vice president presents a problem as there is no letter “J” in Russian, either. Rather than call him Mr. Vance or something, they spell out the “J D” part phonetically, to make something like “Jady.” Although they do have a letter “A”, they have decided that what is closer to American pronunciation for his surname is an “E,” so he has become Jady Vence.

The president is more fortunate. Thanks to Donald Duck, Donald is a well-known name. But since the American “U” is missing in Cyrillic, Russians have decided, in an inspired bit of subtle ridicule, that Jady works for Mr. Tramp.

The subtle humor is not lost on the Kremlin. Along with accommodating the alphabet, the names seem calculated to provoke a casual contempt toward the West in the Kremlin-friendly mainstream press, which shows a marked difference of tone when it comes to their own leaders. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a roughly equivalent double act, are presented as grave and brilliant statesmen promoting Russia’s historical mission in the world as the only truly civilized country who sometimes can’t help smiling at the antics of the Americans.

Joe Biden wasn’t presented as ridiculous. Quite the opposite. America had a well-established role in Russia’s psychodrama. America was responsible for the evil machinations of NATO, and NATO was responsible for creating the Nazi regime in Ukraine. This all needed to be taken totally seriously. With Jady and the Tramp, suddenly they can lighten up. Cheerful reports on TV show nude photos of Melania, and reports from golf courses and rallies are enough to demonstrate that the current regime can raise a smile. An important reason for this change of emphasis is that America seems to have changed sides.

On Aug. 21, Interfax reported that Jady had declared that America will not be participating in any security guarantees for Ukraine and quoted “a representative of the North Atlantic Alliance” as saying that “the U.S. is not fully committed to anything.” A short summary from Russia’s National News Service on the same day informs readers that Jady says approvingly that Putin “looks out for his country’s interests,” mainly involving “certain territories, most of which they have already occupied.” The same report states that “China could become an excellent guarantor of security for both Ukraine and Russia, since the Chinese initially put forward correct and reasonable initiatives to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, which took into account the root causes of the conflict.” This is attributed to Sergey Sanakoev, president of the Russian-Chinese Analytical Center and a Russian government employee. Official news agency TASS has “Jady” saying that “nobody can say with certainty what the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine will be,” without explaining where or when he is supposed to have said this.

Donald Tramp is generally presented as sticking to the Kremlin line, with TASS saying approvingly that he is “determined to end the Ukrainian crisis in spite of all his critics” (again, without attribution). On Aug. 18, a video report from the Argumenty agency claimed that to do this, Tramp was prepared to “return Ukraine to Russia.”

A wider spectrum of opinions can be found on Telegram’s community of War Bloggers, or Z-bloggers as they are sometimes called. Many of them are under Kremlin control, but there are some independent voices. Outside private conversations, that has been about the only way for people to see any open discussion of the Special Military Operation. (One remarkable thing about both state media and the Z-bloggers is the lack of discussion about the Epstein files, despite the scandal dovetailing nicely with the general idea, promoted by Putin with great success, that America is a moral cesspit full of perverts.)

After the Alaska meeting and the follow-up in Washington, a typical pro-government Z-blog, Rybar, which mainly reports frontline combat news, finds the prospect of a Putin meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “something quite incredible,” on the basis that “his autograph on a document is worth nothing, so there is nothing to negotiate with him. This is a quite consistent official line that can be traced in all statements. The Kremlin will not stop considering Zelenskyy illegitimate, and key issues will not be discussed with him directly.”

On the many Telegram channels devoted to the Special Military Operation, the views of Tramp range from the ill-informed to the paranoid to the bizarre. The blogger Yevgeny Ponasenkov declared on Aug. 21 that, “Tramp is a great President and savior of his country!” Yuri Mychil, meanwhile, writes, “Tramp knows perfectly well that the real Putin is dead, and that they are substituting actors for him.” 

Telegram also sometimes offers some grittier coverage of life on the frontlines. A soldier called “Dmitri” (not his real name) gave an interview to the independent Russia.Post site (based in George Washington University) about frontline conditions, and says that you can divide the contract soldiers — who receive relatively large payments to fight — into two groups: convicts and chronic alcoholics. The convicts, following prison habits, mostly use cheap synthetic drugs, and the chronic alcoholics “drink anything that burns.” These two groups are converging. The prisons have now been emptied of convicts prepared to volunteer, so the police are acting as recruitment officers, being paid bonuses for each success. As the Russian police have always had the job of picking up passed-out drunks from the streets for a night in the cells and a fine, this has become a valuable source of cannon fodder. Now they wake up with a hangover to find they have signed up for the frontlines, even if they can’t remember doing so. Those who survive will return to society with PTSD after years of drugged-up killing, torture and theft, only to find no job, no money and little recognition for their part in a war that will eventually need to be forgotten.

This looming threat makes the control of all forms of media even more urgent. Beginning on Sept. 1, it will be compulsory for the new Kremlin-sponsored app Messenger Max to be pre-installed on all new phones and other connected electronic devices. Modeled on the Chinese WeChat app, it is meant to replace all the main alternatives, especially Telegram, which is run from abroad and encrypted, remaining out of reach of government surveillance. It will also provide banking and money transfer functions. In tandem with this, severe restrictions have been placed on Telegram, WhatsApp (Meta is designated an extremist organization in Russia; but before this ban, 80% of Russians used WhatsApp) and many other popular apps, like X and Instagram. Calls on these platforms have been banned by the state telecoms regulator, Roskomnadzor, since Aug. 11 in a move designed to drive people toward the new system. The pretext is that criminals use these unregulated services to defraud honest Russian citizens. But as in China, it will provide permanent government surveillance of everyone using a phone. It will also ensure that only the government line on Tramp and America is widely available.

Also writing in Russia.Post, Yuriy Marin says, “Regime-loyal infrastructure is not enough for the Kremlin — it wants all everyday communication to happen within a system under full regime control.”

The loyalist channels on Telegram are also now carrying notifications that they are moving over to Max. The government is running a big ad campaign and claims that millions of people are already signing up. There is no way of telling if this is true, and there is no telling what will happen to Russian Telegram. It is already swamped with scam accounts, crypto ads, girls in bikinis allegedly looking for love and so on. There is even a sprinkling of pro-Ukrainian accounts openly insulting Putin that probably haven’t originated inside Russia.

An important audience for the war bloggers on Telegram has been people hungry for news they can trust. Dissent being so rare, most of them want a nationalistic kind of news, but without the military secrecy of state TV. They will probably be happy enough on Max. But a few free spirits, whether conspiracy enthusiasts or people afraid of the government, will probably carry on using Telegram for the foreseeable future. The Kremlin line, in other words, is winning.