BELGRADE, THURSDAY

IT WAS A WOOPS moment at Ukrainian Headquarters. A junior officer charged with preparing the final draft of the beleaguered nation’s much-publicized plan for a crushing counter-attack against its Russian invaders, to be spearheaded by German Leopard tanks, noticed that the date specified for the offensive, 22 June, was the same as that for Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, in 1941.

“Red faces all round,” said an insider. “It appears no one had understood the significance of the date, particularly in light of Putin’s declaration that one of the reasons for his attack was to “de-nazify” Ukraine. Awkward, I’m telling you. We got hold of the President and after much raised voice exchanging of views, the date has now been changed.”

“The Ukrainians have to be so careful,” says Rear Admiral Jonty Jumper Matheson RN, hero of the Falklands Conflict and security advisor to a number of Arab sheikdoms. “The whole Azov Regiment culture, the Ukrainian Waffen SS history, the Ukrainian Nazi Holocaust Death Camp Guards history, it can all be read the wrong way by malevolent eyes. Putin would just love to convince his people, and the world, that Russia is facing the might of the Nazi war machine in Ukraine. The Fascist threat, he talks about. We all know this is Kremlin hyperbole. What country doesn’t have a Fascist or two hiding in the cupboard? Even Mother Russia. But in this world, where optics are everything, you know, you just can’t give the Ruskis the slightest taint of credibility. And it’s all about credibility at the end of the day, isn’t it? Otherwise it’s just two gangs of humans trying to kill one another, I suppose.”

A Russian spokesman, on a bad telephone line from Belgorod, shouted that 22 June was also the date that the Red Army launched Operation Bagration in 1944, which destroyed German Army Group Centre, and sealed the fate of the Fascist Third Reich. “Maybe that’s why they have changed the date,” he added to the sound of Ukrainian drone explosions in the background. “And if I properly recall, we were everyone’s best friend back then. Isn’t life a very strange beast?”

“Typical dirty Russian ploy,” remarked Rear Admiral Jumper Matheson, “appealing to our better natures for sympathy. Bloody reds, you could never trust the blighters then and certainly not now.”

“If the new date for their offensive is 5 July,” the Russian spokesman said before his phone went dead, suddenly, “please remind them that that was the date of the 1943 German offensive at Kursk, Operation Citadel. And we won that one too.”