War seems to be on the horizon for tomorrow.

The Ministry of Emergency Situations reports that Moscow's bomb shelters are ready to accommodate and protect the entire population of the capital in the event of bombings. A new food ration is being calculated for the people of Leningrad: three hundred grams of bread per day. The State Duma is conducting evacuation drills and familiarizing itself with bunkers designed to save the elite during wartime. The Central Bank is learning to operate under wartime conditions. War is being discussed on all television channels, showing the transfer of "Iskanders" to Kaliningrad, broadcasting live from a diving bomber in Syria, intruding with cameras on all exercises, fawning over heavy flamethrower systems, and sweetly discussing the possibilities of nuclear exchanges. The Teletubbies dream of war like a virgin yearns for the mystery of the alcove. Donate to bomb shelters, citizens!

The population blinks in a daze and accepts the inevitability of a Third World War: if they say on TV that it will happen, then it will. So, we must prepare. Dig a dugout and unearth grandpa's PPSh from the garden, stock up on buckwheat. And should we pickle mushrooms? Well, why not, the population boasts, we'll march to Berlin once more, and even to Washington. If we can't swallow them whole, we'll take a bite; Kiselev is very convincing when he talks about radioactive ashes. Of course, not everyone is happy: some, on the contrary, tremble and light a candle, hoping to be spared.

So, tomorrow, really? With the West? Until victory?

Don't panic, citizens. And don't get your hopes up. There will be no war.

Our leadership has no intention of waging war with either Europe or America, no matter what the television hypnotoads tell you, and no matter how our excited military might mistake their desires for reality. And certainly, neither America nor Europe plans to go to war with us.

Firstly, because a world war is unwinnable. Reliable missile defense systems do not exist and will not appear in the near future for anyone, meaning any nuclear conflict would lead to a planetary catastrophe and the destruction of all humanity. This is called the principle of mutually assured destruction, and it is this principle that has prevented any world war since the USSR acquired the atom.

Secondly, there are many pretexts for a world war, but no reasons. Today's world is not divided by ideological contradictions. Russia, despite its ostentatious imperial revanchism, is governed not by ideologues but by cynical businessmen and thorough pragmatists who do not believe a jot of what they transmit to the population through the blue screens. And America, though often appearing as a country driven by ideology, is guided on the international stage by considerations of national interests — that is, profit, not principles. In the modern global world, connected by myriads of economic transactions, where only artificially isolated states like Bhutan are completely independent, we have nothing to divide with the West: any cooperation will bring much greater benefits to all parties than any conquest.

Thirdly, the destruction of Russia, its collapse, endless civil wars on our patchwork quilt, the uncontrolled spread of nuclear weapons, their falling into the hands of feudal principalities — this is a nightmare for Europe, the USA, and China. Therefore, whatever they know about the past of our leadership, and however they feel about it, military solutions are not possible here.

The West does not even seek to subjugate Russia. All they want from us is systematism, predictability; to dominate the world, America does not need to boss everyone around, colonize, dismember, and exhaust with concessions. This is all last century, where our retrograde leadership lives. The whole world is already playing by new rules, we alone want to go back to Yalta. If today's Russia irritates the West, it is not by its independence (the independence of a wife who has left a rich husband), but by its hysterical unpredictability. But this is not the kind of unpredictability that can end in a universal war.

For example, North Korea has been provoking the West for many years: developing nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, supporting terrorists, printing counterfeit dollars, industrially producing and exporting amphetamines, threatening America with preemptive nuclear strikes — and what? All this endless fit is met in the West with medical softness and caution; they understand that Pyongyang does this not for America, but for its citizens. They understand: this is not obsession, but epilepsy.

Like the regime of Kim Jong-un, our regime essentially pursues only two important goals: to keep the population in submission and to prevent anyone from interfering in our internal affairs. Our internal affairs are also similar: how to cleverly deceive and oppress people to stay in power forever. Only the methods differ for now. For now. Because the method of endless preparation for war with America has shown itself best in North Korea. For sixty years now, the country has been living in a state of war. To keep the population on alert, drills are conducted almost weekly: after all, American bombers might arrive any moment. And if America suddenly switches to some other dictatorship, North Korea jealously reminds them: hey, what about us? Or, say, when there's a poor rice harvest and nothing to eat, Pyongyang coquettishly asks the UN for humanitarian aid: tests nuclear weapons and screams that it is not responsible for itself.

And now our stomachs are starting to rumble too. So we will also have to run to bomb shelters, calculate our bread ration in case of a blockade, and learn to put on a gas mask from the first grade. War must always loom on the horizon, and we will simultaneously prepare for it with resignation, sing songs about the peaceful sky overhead, and appreciate every moment of today's anemic life. We will now have a perpetual drill alarm — so that there is no time or energy left for other alarms.

This method worked excellently in the USSR and will work today. The people are the same. Look how everyone fell for the fascists in Ukraine, like children. Show us a couple of movies about evil Americans, load an old cassette into the hypnotoad, and the job is done. Did Soviet propaganda hammer hatred of the USA into three generations for nothing? Everything is recorded in the subcortex, nothing has been erased.

And we will now always need an enemy. Ukrainians have been our enemies, Turks have been, but it's all not quite right. We don't want to be Goliath, but David.

And how sweet it is to challenge mighty and toothy America again! How good, my God! How easy it is to hate it, so accurately described by Zadornov! How we missed it!

After all, it's because of American sanctions that our cheese is crap, buckwheat is getting more expensive, and the funded part of the pension has been frozen for years! Because of their Rockefellers, our Ukraine left us! They, the bastards, ruined us altogether! So bless America, Lord, for being such an eternal, convenient, unfailing enemy for us! For us and for any dictatorship.

We are never to blame for anything, of course. And we will never be to blame for anything, because in an imaginary war as in a real war, whoever is not with us is against us, and those who doubt — to the field tribunal. Guards, to arms!