Russia’s former space chief Dmitry Rogozin on Tuesday threatened to send a group of young comedians to the war in Ukraine after they mocked his Ph.D. dissertation on a popular television show.
Rogozin said he was sent a clip from a recent broadcast of the long-running KVN comedy game show, where teams compete for the title of Russia’s “funniest and most inventive club.”
In the sketch that drew his ire, a member of a St. Petersburg team joked that Rogozin had written in his dissertation that “one doesn’t swap the cosmos for a chick.”
“We’ll take them to the front line and wish them good luck in battle,” Rogozin wrote on his Telegram channel, referring to the comedians. “And when they return, we’ll laugh together at their unfortunate, unfunny and vulgar joke.”
Rogozin, a nationalist politician and outspoken supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, served as head of the Roscosmos space agency from 2018 to 2022. He previously held posts as deputy prime minister and Russia’s envoy to NATO.
During his career, he earned a Ph.D. in engineering with a focus on weapons theory.
In his post, Rogozin claimed to know which military enlistment office the KVN team members are registered with and said he was awaiting the name of their joke writer, whom he described as a “talentless punk.”
“We’ll teach them everything, including a sense of humor,” Rogozin wrote.
However, later on Wednesday, he backtracked on his threat, saying that the comedians “are of no interest to us due to their intellectual immaturity.”
“They may be good for silly jokes, but not for defending the Motherland,” Rogozin wrote.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, sending young men to the front as punishment for perceived offenses has become an increasingly common threat.
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