Laurence Crumbie
THE Russian diplomatic mission has mocked allegations that the Kremlin would send in 10,000 soldiers to support Catalunya in its bid for independence.
“You need to add two zeros to the number of soldiers,” announced the embassy in a sarcastic tweet.
“And the most shocking part of the conspiracy: the troops should have been transported by the planes ‘Fly’ and ‘Snub-nosed’, which were assembled in Catalunya during the Civil War and have been hiding in a secure part of the Catalonian Sierra, waiting to receive the coded signal to act,” wrote the diplomats, alluding to two types of Soviet fighter planes used during the Spanish Civil War.
The peculiar conspiracy came to light after Barcelona judge, Joaquin Aguirre, claimed that an unknown Russian group had approached supporters of Catalonian independence in 2017 and offered to deploy 10,000 soldiers to back the movement.
Aguirre claimed that the Motherland planned to aid former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and even consented to pay the region’s debts if it declared independence.
Even though Spanish media jumped on the story, the embassy’s latest tweet reveals that it is nothing more than a big joke to the Russians – and that their diplomats have a sense of humour, too.
