“The vampire ball is coming to an end,” admitted Putin in an interview from an underground bunker with no windows.

The gravity of the situation dawned on the Kremlin: the West is no longer afraid of Russia’s nuclear saber rattling.

Following the latest disastrous test of Russia’s newest (and supposedly “already deployed” by the Russian strategic missile forces) intercontinental ballistic missile “Satan II” (Sarmat), which exploded during the launch, the only reliable tools left in Kremlin’s anti-West arsenal are lies and threats.

The whole Kremlin diplomatic gang, including Lavrov, Zakharova, Peskov — and now Putin himself — are desperately trying to convince us that there are still “red lines”, stopping just short of saying “nukes” (because Chairman Xi banned them from saying that).

Putin’s level of confidence in the strength of his position within Russia is obviously off the charts, with the Russian Duma just voting for the law under which participants of a coup will be sentenced to life in prison.

In other news from Russia:

• The Russian government intends to increase defense spending to 13.2 trillion rubles ($142 billion) in 2025 from 10.4 trillion rubles planned for this year. Total defense and internal security spending in 2025 will amount to about 40% of Russia’s budget. And that’s not including spending on propaganda, which is at record high levels as well.
• After the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian labor market lost 2 million workers aged 19 to 40, HeadHunter CEO Dmitry Sergienkov told “Kommersant”. The smarter ones left Russia, obviously, while the rest had been thrown by Putin into the furnace of the war.
• The Russian government supported 2 bills that ban “childfree ideology”. The laws are spelled in such a way that a woman can be prosecuted for simply saying in public, "I don't want to have kids."
• Russians will be imprisoned for up to 2 years for disrespect to authorities in internet posts.
• Starting this year, all Grade 8 pupils at Russian schools have to attend a 3-day basic military training course. Grade 10 pupils will be sent to a 5-day course run by the Ministry of Defense. Classes on "Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland" start from Grade 5.

• There is a growing support for banning Darwin’s theory of evolution from Russian schools.

After the Bolsheviks won the Civil War in 1922, they immediately abolished 2 school subjects in Soviet schools: history and logic.

History returned to schools 10 years later, but only as propaganda, while logic has never been returned.

As the result, neo-Bolsheviks under Putin now want to abolish biology.

A Russian Duma member stated that “Russians and Belorussians are God creatures, while Poles, Latvians and Estonians evolved from monkeys and earthworms.”

Russian Duma member Vitaly Milonov believes that Russians are not subject to biological evolution.

• The Russian Duma also intends to make “Russophobia” a crime. For the crime of Russophobia, Russian courts intend to prosecute foreign citizens who are Russophobic against Russians — regardless of their citizenship.

Just let it sink in: Russia intends to prosecute western citizens for allegedly ”oppressing” other western citizens.

It’s like Taliban making a law to punish western politicians for disallowing stoning of women for not wearing a hijab.

Now, what future developments the Russian Duma has up its sleeve?

Putin’s ideologist Alexander Dugin proposes to ban sales of condoms in Russia.

Dugin insists that condoms should be only sold to those Russians who already have many children.

No condoms or contraceptive pills for:

• Childless men and women over 22.
• Men and women over 30 with only 1 child.
• Those who are divorced.

For those who are buying and selling condoms illegally, there should be fines and prison time.

Another Dugin’s idea for the special operation "Battle for Reproduction" is mandatory checks on homosexuality for all men over 18. For this purpose, Dugin even wants to create a centralized federal commission. (How this commission is going to check men’s sexuality is beyond my imagination.)

In the Soviet Union, it was so hard to buy condoms that many men were washing them and reusing. The new generation of Russians might have to learn from their grandfathers.

What happens to Russia once Putin is finished and no longer in charge depends on how deep it’s allowed to sink into this insanity.

At certain departments, Russia has already sank deeper than the Soviet Union in 1984 — and is getting closer and closer to 1937.

Former BBC chief in Moscow Konstantin Eggert believes that Russian elites will wake up before the country descends into a complete chaos.

“There will be no revolution, no real North Korea, no civil war. In a rapidly aging and dying country with a completely decayed state apparatus, there will either be a palace coup (unlikely, but not completely excluded), or the movie “The Death of Stalin” with the victory of the most cunning apparatchik at the end. For this, a real defeat in the war is needed, recognized by both the authorities and (silently) the people. In the meantime, the degradation will continue, noticeably accelerated by the war.”

If Putin’s “vampire’s ball” ended soon, it might take Russians a couple of decades to rebuild the economy — depending on the level of Russia’s post-war repentance and the speed of repayment of its debts to Ukraine.

But if a group that wants to continue Putin’s course comes to power, Russia’s plunge into North Korea isn’t out of question.