Midnight in Moscow

 Unless you welcomed 2023 with a thrash-metal version of "Auld Lang Syne" you probably can't imagine what Russian state TV's four-hour cruelty party was like.  Freezing Europeans!  Empty boasts!  Carefully selected soldiers with medals!  Recycled USSR humor!  Read it, you'll never complain about the blandness of Anderson Cooper again.

If you love classical music you will be especially nauseated by the artists who made sure to attend Putin's war crimes party, one of whom actually cancelled a performance at La Scala so he could be there.  Somebody should tell these ladies and gentlemen about what happened to Wilhelm Furtwangler after 1945.  Maybe they're hoping to be treated as courteously as Herbert von Karajan, who joined the Nazi party in Austria and again in Germany and died covered in honors that were as corrupt as his "von."

Russia loudly announced a 36-hour cease-fire for Ukrainian Christmas, clearly to let its exhausted troops rest and regroup.  Another half-million "recruits" are supposedly being called and if the past year is anything to go by, will find themselves at the front without training, equipment or boots.  That doesn't sound like the noisy jollity of Vladimir Soloviev praising the gulag and the possibility of nuclear war.  Mindless bombing and shelling is all they have.

No, he's not wearing a suit and a tie.