... The morning of August 6 began in the northern capital in the same way as in other Russian cities that were on the way of Comrade Kim's "Trans-Siberian Express". Tightly cordoned off, carefully cleared of citizens, repeatedly checked and carefully ...

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The morning of August 6 began in the northern capital in the same way as in other Russian cities that found themselves on the path of Comrade Kim's "Trans-Siberian Express". Tightly cordoned off, carefully cleared of citizens, repeatedly checked and carefully sniffed by special dogs, the Moskovsky railway station met the distinguished guest, and all along the Moscow-Petersburg route, citizens left without the usual commuter trains cursed quietly or loudly. Hundreds of thousands of people could not get to the city or leave it, get to work on time or return from garden plots. Among the sufferers unexpectedly turned out to be one and a half thousand fans of Zenit, who played the winning match of the 20th round of the football championship with Moscow Dynamo not on Saturday, like everyone else, but on Sunday, and faced the severe need to get to their hometown at one time with Comrade Kim's armored train. For those who were very lucky, they returned on Monday afternoon, for those who were not very lucky, only in the evening ...

But they were all flowers. Berries began when the cortege of the "beloved leader" (numbering more than forty (!) Cars) began to travel around the city. Not only was everything that was possible blocked off in its path, and a policeman loomed in each gateway (according to my friend, the last time he saw something like this was thirty years ago - in 1972, when American President Richard Nixon), as well as the route of movement and a pre-agreed program changed approximately every ten minutes. And I must say that covering up the tracks of the Korean leader turned out great - if some Russian Lee Harvey Oswald had been waiting for him somewhere on the route, he would have had a hard time. But it was even more difficult for all those who were responsible for the safety of Comrade Kim at all the "points" where he theoretically could appear during the day, but no one knew whether he would appear, and if he did, then when exactly.

As a result, at all these "objects" the well-known story was consistently repeated: "the guests did not come, he walked around like a fool with a clean neck." So, the Korean leader was expected on Monday at the Piskarevsky cemetery, which, like the Moscow railway station, was cordoned off in advance, hastily removed by “conscripts” soldiers and checked by Russian and Korean “security guards”, but he did not go (they say, because of the rain) . But I went to the Hermitage - for which they blocked a hefty piece of the Palace Embankment both for cars and for walking citizens. Then they waited for Comrade Kim on the Aurora, which, of course, was “ringed”, as they say, from keel to klotik and stripped to a samovar shine, but he also did not appear on the cruiser of the revolution, but instead sailed on a boat to the Peter and Paul Fortress. Corded off, checked, removed ... in general, see above. According to the same scheme, Comrade Kim visited the Mariinsky Theater and - all of a sudden - the Baltika brewery, where he had to urgently induce a nix. When he returned to the hotel, Nevsky Prospekt was blocked, where cursing drivers continuously commemorated the mother of the Korean leader, unknown to them and, of course, not personally guilty of anything ...

In general, by the evening the city lived with one hope: to send the dear guest away as soon as possible. But it was not possible to get off cheaply.

Comrade Kim's departure was scheduled for eleven o'clock in the morning on August 7, and the trains from the Moscow station, just in case, had not been running since eight. As a result, tens of thousands of people who habitually arrived at the station ten minutes before the departure of "their" train, suddenly found out that it was either canceled, or delayed, or leaving ... from Rybatskoye station (which is a few stops from the station). Almost all the trains arriving in St. Petersburg on the morning of August 7 were late - they were apparently kept somewhere "on the way". The entire schedule of long-distance train departures "flew" - it is difficult to repeat the words uttered to Comrade Kim on the platforms of the station. At that time, the beloved leader himself nevertheless visited the Piskarevsky cemetery (on this occasion, even a stray dog ​​was driven out of there: what if he bites - not figuratively, but in the literal sense?) And the Kirov factory, where everything went according to the already familiar pattern. Then, finally, he left home, and by the evening nothing reminded of the two-day natural disaster that had befallen the city.

The "price" of Comrade Kim's visit has yet to be calculated, although it is difficult to estimate the wasted time and frayed nerves of hundreds of thousands of Petersburgers. But for the sake of what, in fact, did they “put on their ears” a city of five million? More precisely, for whom? For the sake of a petty dictator of a small totalitarian state, the benefits of communicating with which, to put it mildly, are doubtful for Russia? Why is it necessary to humiliate the citizens of one's own country in the name of Comrade Kim's whims? If, say, Germany or the United States were visited by the President of South Korea, would it occur to anyone to start similar "security measures"?

The only hypothesis that comes to mind is that Comrade Kim was invited to Russia solely for the purpose of comparative analysis. After all, against his background, the Russian president looks like Sakharov, Gandhi and Roosevelt rolled into one. And, having looked at the beloved leader of the DPRK, Russian citizens are simply obliged to begin to appreciate their own ...

“I should have called Moscow in advance,” lamented an acquaintance from St. Petersburg, a journalist who had been “tracking” the visit of the Korean leader for two days and was able to speak about him exclusively in the language of the Odessa bindyuzhniks. - To say that the Leningradsky railway station is mined. You see, he would not have gone to us at all ... "