Abstract

While the real Putin is far away, his double runs a daily stream from a vegetable cellar.

And the whole country watches. And each sees his own.

A wife in an elite isolation ward clings to a saving word. A policeman chooses the optimal course of action. Intelligence officers hunt one another. Former favorites dream of returning to power. And in the very center of Moscow, the chief double reads from folders and begins to suspect something is amiss.

Before you is a chronicle of the war. Before you is a chronicle of its reflections.

Each chapter is a new viewer. A new gaze. A new mirror. Which mirrors show the truth? Which distort it beyond recognition? Or perhaps all of them reflect not the world, but the fears, hopes and delusions of those who look into them?

Satire gradually turns into tragedy. Tragedy — into farce. And farce unexpectedly becomes a document of the times.

Welcome to the funhouse of crooked mirrors.

Perhaps in one of them you will see yourself.