Putin follows the Ceausescu playbook

Here's hoping it ends the same way.

You’ve probably seen that Vladmir Putin held a giant rally in support of his “special military operation” in Ukraine. This Twitter thread from a BBC producer based in Moscow (probably not for much longer) alleges that many of the attendees were there voluntarily.

And by “voluntarily” I mean “they’d lose their jobs and probably get poisoned if they didn’t.”

I was immediately transported back to Christmas, 1989, when another tyrant from that part of the world organized a “voluntary” rally with workers ordered to attend.