On New Year's Eve, Russian state television aired a programme that represented the height of tastelessness and kitsch; compared to it, the former Engerian "cauldron of entertainment" Ein Kessel Buntes is the pinnacle of television entertainment. Words are usually a pity for a failed product, but in this case it was also a massive example of vicious, often cruel cynicism based on a false and distorted view not only of the war in Ukraine but of the world in general. Uniforms in the auditorium and on stage, inane and, above all, malicious joking about the irreplaceability of Russian gas, how it's fine that Ukrainians are freezing and the world is short of energy, rhyming and singing with scandalous political lyrics.