Pet Shop Boys release new song targeting Putin

Filed 53m ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Fig Leaf Rag - distressed

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Superbass · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Pet Shop Boys released 'A Top Secret Washing Machine' on YouTube on September 18, timed to the first day of Russia's three-day State Duma elections, satirizing Vladimir Putin and referencing Alexei Navalny's 2020 poisoning and his 2021 courtroom jab that Putin would go down in history as 'Vladimir the Underpants Poisoner.' Navalny survived the poisoning, which was linked to a Novichok-family agent, but died in a Russian penal colony in 2024.

The song is the duo's second Putin-themed release after 2023's 'Living in the Past,' which depicted Putin morphing into Stalin. Russia's Central Election Commission reported United Russia winning 57.83% of the party-list vote with 355 of 450 Duma seats, results the EU says came amid deepening authoritarianism and without OSCE observers.

Russia also ran voting in occupied Ukrainian territory, which Ukraine's Foreign Ministry called illegal and the EU said it will not recognize, threatening sanctions on organizers.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A pop song is not exactly a sanctions regime, but it does the one thing state media can't touch, which is make the man sound ridiculous instead of frightening. Elections with a preordained winner and no outside observers tend to invite exactly this kind of mockery. The Kremlin can jail a critic; it can't stop a chorus from getting stuck in people's heads.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: Fig Leaf Rag - distressed · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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