Juche in the morning, croupier in the evening

Return of the feuilleton

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned to the carpet his last friends in this big and uncomfortable world - the ambassadors of Belarus and the DPRK and handed them notes of protest - respectively No. 4219/2 dsng to the Belarusian brother and No. And what...

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned to the carpet his last friends in this big and uncomfortable world - the ambassadors of Belarus and the DPRK and handed them notes of protest - respectively No. 4219/2 dsng to the Belarusian brother and No.

What was left to do? After all, as it turned out, illegal casinos operated in the embassies of the countries mentioned, which was reflected in the diplomatic notes. The first one says: “According to the information available in the Ministry, a gambling establishment was illegally functioning on the territory of the embassy for a certain time.” In the second document, the expression "gambling establishment", probably alien to the ears of North Korean comrades, was deciphered with diplomatic tact through a dash: "casino". And further, in plain text: "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs urgently demands the closure of the casino."

Both in Minsk and in Pyongyang, the reaction was approximately the same: “no and cannot be”, “no and never was”. But they could have shown the bewitching Belarusian ingenuity and the legendary North Korean rate of fire. Why did the Belarusians not object, for example, that in the gambling club "Shangri La" in the hotel "Polesie", located on the territory of the diplomatic mission, in fact, as Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko would say, he "hunted", not some kind of nativity scene, but a table hockey, in which real men raked the chips with a stick. By the way, the entrance to Shangri La is from Armenian Lane, so in a pinch it was possible to blame everything on Yerevan. And the people's democratic Koreans could well say that the golden figure in the center of the roulette wheel is a steel commander who, spinning, constantly shows the only correct course of development. What about chips? What chips? These are badges depicting Kim Il Sung. Bets are made, comrades. Rien ne va plus. The bet is big.

In any case, in the place of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I would not chop off the shoulder and arrange demarches. In Belarus, as you know, money ran out, and in the DPRK, where they didn’t exist before, all the rice came out. And diplomats somehow have to make ends meet. It is difficult to resist world imperialism on an empty stomach.

And I am convinced that our Belarusian and North Korean friends thought not only about themselves. With sincere regret watching how two worthy guardians of Russian law, Chaika and Bastrykin, who did not agree on the assessment of illegal gambling establishments near Moscow, tear each other's mouths and gouge out their eyes with their fingers, diplomats, in fact, did them a favor, because casinos in embassies have the status extraterritoriality. So there is no need to cover them.

On the other hand, they provided international assistance to Russian gamblers who are going through a painful breakdown after the entry into force in July 2009 of the Federal Law banning gambling in Russia. After all, the current generation of Russian gambling people is unlikely to live to see the opening of special gambling zones that seem to be provided for by law. In addition, the Armenian lane is closer to Primorye and even Altai, and the embassy of the DPRK is safer than the Kuban.