FROM THE SITE OF THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE, YEKATERINBURG, RUSSIA

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: the Wagner coup was all just a little piece of reality television according to the Kremlin.

“Sure, I’m A Mercenary, Get Me Out Of Here is due for broadcast next year,” according to Rasputin Gogol, a press officer in President Vladimir Putin’s secret bunker buried under the church now atop the site of the old House of Special Purpose where the last Russian Tsar and his family were shot in 1918.

“The hope is that Netflix or Stan will pick it up. I mean what did you make of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s performance? Pretty damn credible, no? Al Pacino, eat your heart out. I mean that as a joke, the rumors about us eating hearts are just that.

“President Putin was very excited when so many fools thought the march on Moscow was a genuine coup. They couldn’t see the producer, the director, the special effects people, the makeup department. And the cameras. Hey, they don’t call it reality TV for nothing.

“Now Yevgeny P. is in Minsk for dubbing and final editing, and a short cookery course. The Wagner people have taken off their makeup and are back at their posts; and President Putin is back from the toilet. Something he ate. But not cooked by Prigozhin. No.”