Do I detect an air of Pofik!?
Edited 30 September 2025 | First published: 3 July 2022 ~ Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions
It cannot be pleasant being the least liked prime minister in British history, but it should be remembered that Kier Starmer and his crew are only where they are today as a result of 14 years of Tory ineptitude, non-stop party infighting and off-the-chart bungling and incompetence. If the Cons hadn’t been so obsessed in beating Labour at its own wokist game, and Badenoch is a symptom of this absurdity, the foundations that they laid which paved the way for Labour’s accession would never have lost us our country.
This post, originally published in July of 2022, was a response to two inseparable misconceptions: first, that with work Boris Johnson could overcome himself and somehow run the country; and second, that Western sanctions would critically undermine Russia’s economic stability, which has proven to be far more resilient than the UK and its allies evidently anticipated. Here is that retrospective.
With Lithuania threatening to blockade Kaliningrad by restricting transit of goods from mainland Russia by train, the Latvian interior minister gleefully announcing that this proved that the West was poised to ‘take Kaliningrad away from Russia’1 and the prime minister of Poland making so much noise that it is difficult to tell whether it is his sabre rattling, his teeth chattering or something more personal knocking together, it looked as though once again the storm clouds had begun to gather over the former region of the Teutonic Order.
I cannot, however, say with any semblance of sincerity that, as the shadow slowly dispersed, the Kaliningrad populace breathed a sigh of relief, for, quite frankly, and not flippantly, but wanting as always to tell it exactly as it is, nobody — meaning nobody with whom in Kaliningrad I am acquainted — seemed to give a flying f*ck!
You can put it down to whatever you like: the Russian penchant for c’est la vie, faith in themselves and their country, a growing immunity to the West’s mouth and trousers or perhaps the absence of a corporate media that makes its fortune by pedalling fear, but, whatever you attribute it to, if the residents of Kaliningrad were supposed to feel concerned by the slew of sanctions and the threat of isolation, then think again, as it didn’t happen.
Perhaps the intended fallout never occurred because we were all too busy laughing at Boris Johnson’s jokes. For example, the one about the conflict in Ukraine, which, says Boris, would never have happened had Vladimir Putin been a woman. Woked the Downing Street clown, It’s the “perfect example of toxic masculinity,” causing me to ask myself what exactly is masculinity when it is detoxified? Is it where you rove around without wearing any pants with your gonads painted rainbow colours, or when you go into hiding like President Turdeau does whenever he hears a trucker’s horn?
To increase his chances of success in obtaining future employment with Robert Brothers’ Circus, Boris jocularly suggested during the G7 Summit that the leaders of the ‘free’ world (free with every packet of neoliberal dictatorship) should, to equal the manliness of Vladimir Putin, take off all their clothes, to which President Putin replied, and I think this is something we all can agree on, “I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight …”2 It certainly conjured up an image far more frightful than any threat that the collective West had yet devised and had a far more psychologically damaging impact than the predictability of waging war with the globalist weapon of choice — sanctions.
Alack-a-day, as unthinkable as it is, if Boris wasn’t joking, then his latest remarks well might be some of the most stupid things he has ever said. However, it doesn’t necessarily follow. Occasionally, but seldomly, and most likely accidentally, Boris proves to himself, and others who care to listen to him, that if he tries, really tries, he is capable of utterances that seem at face value to make some sense, not much and not often, granted, but like miracles and wishes that sometimes can come true, the fantastic has been known to happen, which is more than can be said for anyone in the Labour party ~ or about any and all of the Labour party’s supporters.
Nevertheless, Boris old boy, you must admit that some of the things that you have been blurting out of late do have a rather silly public schoolboy wheeze about them. Now, were you the current President of the United States at least you could plead senility or, failing that, insanity. But be careful and beware! Keep on behaving in this childish manner and you’ll make yourself the perfect candidate for filling Biden’s boots when in a not long time from now Biden’s booted out.
Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions
I suppose that in moments like these, those of us who are old enough to remember, should simply take a step backwards and give thanks that we lived in the England of old, in the days of pre-gender bending. And though for most Winston Churchill has passed from living memory into history, note that the great man himself was endowed with more than his fair share of so-called ‘toxic masculinity’, even more, perhaps, than that which queerly circulates among whatever it is that charges around playing women’s rugby. And heaven be praised that Winston Churchill was such a toxically manly man, for had it not been so, we’d all be speaking German now. Mein Gott!
We don’t. And the dark clouds over Kaliningrad, like all the threats and nonsense leaching out from the G7 Summit, were nothing but storms in a teacup. The only positive outcome for those of us in the West who are rapidly losing faith in ever being blessed again with a real man for prime minister is that Boris kept his trousers on.
And yet, so as not to be accused of having been economical with the truth, I can confirm that a storm did break. After a glorious week of glorious weather, Kaliningrad and its region were suddenly plunged headlong into the most frightful and persistent series of electric storms imaginable.
For three days and as many nights, the firmament’s guts growled flatulently. Sheets of livid light flashed across the sky and, lying there in bed unable to sleep because of it, it was easy to imagine that the entire world was forked ~ forked, that is, with lightning!
Olga was in a right old tizz. To her it was a celestial sign, unequivocal confirmation that her tarot-card readers, crystal-ball gazers, soothsayers and the like, whose predictions she believes implicitly and to whom she refers collectively and in glowing terms as esoterics, whom I call snake-oil salesmen, had got it bang to rights: change was in the air; portentous and tumultuous change; a new bright dawn was coming.
Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions
As strange as it may seem, our normally vocal cat Gin-Ginsky had nothing to say on the matter, or if he did, he was keeping it to himself. He is a rather diplomatic cat. He doesn’t make jokes like Boris Johnson, which means he remains in favour and, unlike Boris Johnson, makes him rather easy to live with.
Considering him to be a little less slim than once he probably was, Ginger, not Boris Johnson, we recently changed his food to a brand called ‘Food for Fat Cats’, as recommended by those in the West who keep their clothes on at G7 Summits.
The word ‘light’ on the packet implies this food has dietary benefit. Ginger seems to love it. He scoffs it twice as fast as he did when eating his former brand and in ever-increasing quantities. Every now and again he will look up from his bowl and fix you with his ginger eyes as if to say, “Fat cat, indeed, I’ll show you!” Perhaps, the meaning of ‘Food for Fat Cats’ is ‘Food to make cats fatter’? I must remember to warn him that if he ever attends a G7 Summit not to take his shirt off!
Those of you who in the West, especially those among you who changed your Arsebook avatars to the colours of the Ukrainian flag and are now ashamed you did but never will admit it, are dying to hear, I know, how badly the sanctions are biting in Kaliningrad. That’s why I mentioned the cat: he’s biting into his grub. But I would be Boris Johnson should I lie and say that the price of cat food has not increased incrementally since the waving of the magic wand of sanctions. What other things have gone up recently (ooerr Mrs)? Have all of us in Kaliningrad been forced to change our diet? Are we all eating cheaper brands of cat food?
I know that an interest in this topic exists because lately a lot of people have been tuning into my post Panic Buying Shelves Empty. I can only presume that this is down to Brits kerb-crawling the internet in search of hopeful signs that western sanctions don’t lack teeth.
Instances exist, I will admit, when we, like our cat, are biting these days into different brand-named foods than those in which we used to sink our gnashers before sanctions were pulled from the hat. The reason being, I suppose, because the brands that we used to buy belong to manufacturers who have been forced into playing Biden’s game, Exodus & Lose Your Money.
Price increases in some food categories have been duly noted. Pheew, what a relief, I hear you say. If this was not the case, then the sanctions’ ideology would be more embarrassing than it already is for leaders of western countries who are ruining their own economies by having introduced them.
Were we talking beer? If we weren’t then, we are now.
With the advent of the sanctions, some beer brands are noticeably absent, although the earlier gaps in shelves have since been filled with different brands from different brewers from different parts of the world. Those brands untouched by sanctimonies, which is to say those that still remain, do reflect a hike in price, but as prices fluctuate wildly here during the best of times, it is simply a matter of shopping around as one always does, sanctions or no sanctions, for products that do not mug your pocket.
So, there in essence you have it. Not from the bought and paid for UK corporate media, agenda-led by globalist moguls, but from an honest-to-goodness sanctioned Englishman reporting from Russia’s Kaliningrad, who is willing to swear on a stack of ale casks, with one hand on his heart and the other on his beer glass, that life in Russia’s exclave under threat and sanctions has changed so little as to be negligibly different to life as it was in the days when sanctions were but an evil twinkle in the eyes of those whose machinations have ultimately let them down.
If you wanted to hear that the sanctions are working, I’m sorry I disappointed you.
Copyright © 2018-2025 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.
References
1. Russia threatened NATO with a “meat grinder” when trying to take Kaliningrad Russian news EN (lenta-ru.translate.goog)
2. https://www.rt.com/russia/558107-putin-boris-johnson-response/
Image attributions
Thunderbolt: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Mr-Thunderbolt-cloud-vector-image/31288.html
Fat man: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/fat-man-clipart_4.htm
