Stand-up comedians from the post-KGB

From the latest Moscow Times piece on the hi-tech stone the devious Intelligence Service placed into the heart of Moscow to make life easier for Albion’s spies:

The Federal Security Service said Thursday that the large rock purportedly captured from British intelligence contained high-tech intelligence equipment worth millions of dollars.

“Judging by the way it was put together, it is space technology,” Sergei Ignatchenko, chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said on Rossia television. “Experts estimate it cost tens of millions of dollars to make. You can make such a technological wonder only under laboratory conditions.”

The stone in question was not the one seen in FSB footage broadcast Sunday on Rossia, which accused four British diplomats of being spies and using a similar rock to receive information. That stone was taken away by a British diplomat, but the FSB left no stone unturned in their search for a similar stone, Ignatchenko said.

A second rock was found after FSB agents scoured Moscow for a month, he said. Rossia showed FSB agents picking up the hollow rock out of the snow. Ignatchenko said the stone was designed to work for long periods under water and could withstand a fall from nine stories. He did not say whether it had been dropped from a nine-story building.

His comments came after much joking about the stone in the British media.

No comment from me. According to William Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital, a large country investment fund active in Russia for a decade or more: “Russia makes lots of mistakes, but their biggest mistake is never trying to explain.” Right, but are we dealing with ruthless cynics posing as fools or with genuine fools?

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