MOSCOW

WITH THE UKRAINIAN ADVANCE towards Kursk continuing apace, Western commentators speculate furiously on how long it will take the Ukrainians to conquer Russia.

“The first 30km are always the hardest,” says Brigadier Gerard Escargot, late of Her Majesty’s 115th Mounting Root, “after that, as long as you keep your eyes on the prize, it should be a walkover. What’s 8,970km when your morale is strong and your cause is just?”

Other experts have raised the spectres of Napoleon and Hitler. “Logistics is everything,” remarked former Waffen SS Untersturmfuhrer Walter Belzec. “We were betrayed by our logistics, and the Russian railway gauge.”

“Napoleon got to Moscow and found no one there,” says Professor Albert Mucous-Tinder, who writes for the International Institute of Armchair Generals. “That’s the problem with Russia, figuring out the bits that have anyone in them. Hitler got diverted chasing vast amounts of uninhabited land. These Ukrainian chaps will need to focus on what matters, and bring packed lunches. Vladivostok is not that far way.”