I am watching the speech of our third most important representative at the UN, a man named Safronkov, and I feel a burning shame. Sitting in the UN Security Council, the powerhouse of global diplomacy, this man named Safronkov behaves like a local cop interrogating Tajiks detained without registration.

"Look at me! Don't avert your eyes! Why are you looking away?... Don't you dare insult Russia anymore!" gasps the inarticulate man, breathless with anger, at the lean and restrained British diplomat in response to the observation that Russia is blocking anti-Assad resolutions in the UN Security Council for the seventh time. This is, of course, plain rudeness and a violation of the complex, highly ceremonial diplomatic etiquette. Translated into English, Safronkov's outburst loses much of its sting, and the British permanent representative might not even take offense. But we understand. Safronkov wanted to humiliate the British diplomat—if not drag him through the mud, then at least metaphorically urinate on his head.

Channel One proudly broadcasts the clash of the strong Safronkov with his feeble British colleague in the news. Safronkov performed for Channel One. He showed the Russian TV viewer how we demand respect at the UN: like a drunk paratrooper on August 2nd in the fountains of Gorky Park confronting leisurely strolling hipsters.

Whether by chance or not, this happens after U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson leaves Moscow, having secured some secret concessions from Putin. It's probably just PR aimed at our domestic audience, scratching their bellies in front of the TV. A light version of showing who's boss, performed by a man with a collective farm appearance and police manners. Thank goodness he didn't take off his shoe and start banging it on the podium.

The infamous eighty percent of Putin's admirers are apparently supposed to feel emotions opposite to mine: a surge of pride for the Motherland. First, the annexation of Crimea against all international law, then the igniting of a civil war in Donbas, then the support of a bloodthirsty dictator in Syria, and now this. All thrown into the furnace of patriotism.

Etiquette, irony, balance, politeness, ceremoniousness, tact, the art of circumlocution, the ability to avoid conflicts and smooth over sharp edges, the search for and finding of compromise in impossible situations—these are the qualities and skills of a diplomat.

Recent Russian diplomacy—boorish, deceitful, autistic—looks stupid, disgraceful, and comical. Instead of pulling the country out of the pit of international isolation where it found itself due to the adventurism and paranoia of its top leadership, our diplomacy tries to pander to some imaginary lumpen in stretched-out tank tops, masturbating to Kiselyov with beer and smelt.

Maria Zakharova, speaking in a mix of slang and thieves' cant, being rude to her Western (thankfully not Eastern) colleagues on Twitter, the haughty foreign minister calling Saudi princes, our strategic rivals, idiots on record—all of this was quite bold, but Safronkov surpassed them all at once.

When an eccentric Soviet general secretary bangs his shoe on the podium of the General Assembly, it can be attributed to his personality: after all, Trump is forgiven for worse, and Putin has allowed himself media sharpness more than once. But when a career diplomat starts bullying and humiliating, it's the end of times. It's like imagining a KGB-patriarch, corrupt prime ministers, or surgeons demanding money for anesthesia in free hospitals.

Even representatives of dubious African dictatorships, whose leaders might occasionally eat their political opponents, behaved much more civilly at the UN.

Channel One, of course, thinks that this way Russia demonstrates its strength. No, dear Channel One, and all other channels of our sewer system. With this, Russia tries to mask its weakness and insecurity, to hide its loneliness and fatigue. Confident powers do not need to stoop to gutter language and fall into hysteria. Neither the USA, nor China, nor the UK have ever allowed themselves anything like this.

Russia must choose: either work to become a great power again, which it undoubtedly was—or just seem like one to TV viewers with incomplete secondary education, a Rothschild conspiracy in their heads, and the smell of booze on their breath.

The latter, of course, is easier. So that's what we'll do.

Safronkov for President!