Strummin’ on the old vranyo!  Vladimir Putin, in Kremlin propaganda photo.from the website of the President of the Russian Federation licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, from www.kremlin.ru, courtesy of Wikimedia.

Jesus called Satan “a liar and the father of lies.”

There can be no doubt about the camp to which Putin belongs.

Elena Gorokhova, in the the New York Times back in 2011:

Vranyo is a special Russian word for lying — a special form of lying. I learned of it in a Leningrad nursery school from Aunt Polya, who was in charge of the kitchen and who wasn’t really my aunt. … We all knew she was watching us, she knew that we knew and we knew she knew that we knew. She gave us surprise glances, and we chewed diligently, pretending we didn’t expect her to look. We all played the game: my sister played it at school, and my parents played it at work. All of us pretended, the watchers and the watched.

…

When I recently opened The New York Times and saw Vladimir Putin — soon to become, once again, Russia’s president — walking out of the Black Sea with two nearly intact ancient amphorae in his hands, the vranyo alarm went off.

…

The smell of vranyo was so strong I had to put down the paper. I was sure that thousands of Russians were smirking in recognition of the old pretending game: Putin was lying to us, we knew he was lying, he knew we knew he was lying, but he kept lying anyway, and we pretended to believe him.

…

Did those young Russians who never learned about vranyo believe in the Putin who waded out of the sea, clutching history? Did they see him as a hero? The picture had everything to make our hearts flutter with patriotic pride: a strongman defying time and human limitations. My own heart warmed not to Putin but to the photograph’s Black Sea backdrop. It made me pine for my youth, for the Crimea and for blue-eyed Boris. I never told my mother about that summer, having tucked away the month of salty wind and sleeping on the beach into the dark attic of vranyo. And my mother has never asked me, pretending to believe my story about a girlfriend’s dacha.

Glory to Ukraine.