FOREWORD FROM THE EMPRESS'S FATHER

I don't fly anywhere, but you can't say I know nothing. Sport, you see. Golf, to be precise. You never know who you'll meet there—professors, taxi drivers… And the taxi drivers here—boy, they're something else! They'll repeat everything they hear, and sometimes they even ask for advice.

We're from Ukraine ourselves. Now everything's upside down. Russians and Ukrainians fight over prepositions—"from Ukraine" versus "of Ukraine." Small words, big meaning: one emphasizes a country, the other just a region. Funny what weight a preposition can carry.

You could even push it further and say "from Russia"—just like Russians talk about Ukraine, to downgrade it from a country to a mere territory. Tiny words, huge implications.

Wisdom? Beats me. Though for us here, all these jokes come easier. Back home, it's war.

On TV, it started in the summer of 2013. In reality, Crimea was taken in 2014, and then the attacks began in the eastern regions. Where governors and businessmen managed to organize a defence, Ukraine remained; where things followed Girkin's playbook, it became ORDLO, "certain districts"—or, more bluntly, Lugandon.

Now there are military exercises. Hundreds of thousands of troops crammed into barracks. They say there's been another genocide of the Chechen people. Maybe. But don't provoke our daughter. She's the empress there now—and a dictator, too. Everything done seriously, no jokes.

How did she become empress? Simple. She married a man named Slava Fridlyand from St. Petersburg and made him emperor. Wait—you haven't read the six books before this one? Then let me explain.

Our daughter was sent to Russia to atone for some intelligence sins. There, in the Presidential Administration, she created a Putin double. A perfect copy—right down to the genes. She married him. Had a little son. He's sitting here with us, drawing. Good boy. Then she sent the real Putin into space and installed her husband as deputy. All above board. The oligarchs approved. Important tasks were assigned, checked—it's all in the books.

Then came reforms to refine the country and improve people's lives. Then they voted for the empire. That's it: Putin, our Putin—emperor; our daughter—the empress. Later, he supposedly fell ill. So, Putin's in the fridge, and the empress is dictator. Simpler this way, less bureaucracy. Still, you have to fight and scheme.

What should you expect from this book? We already did the left-wing twists. Now it's time for the right. A touch of mysticism, a swirl of palace intrigues. After all, people are still people. Coat it with intelligence reports. Shake things up in an uneven fight. Then we come home and talk over dinner.

How will it end? Full-scale aggression, I suspect. That's the only recipe I've got.