The Wildlife Fund states that the Leopard, which, according to the results of the dubious (at least, the President considers it to be such) television voting, has been selected as the Olympic Games mascot, is actually not a Leopard at all, but rather – like Cheburashka, a fictional character in children’s literature – is “an animal unknown to science”. Perhaps, as Ostap Bender was persuading Ellochka the Cannibal in The Twelve Chairs, a classical satirical novel by the Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, we luckily got ‘much better furs’ – perhaps, instead of the Mexican jerboa they gave us the Shanghai leopard, but there is no scientific evidence to prove that.

The voting for the Sochi Olympic Games mascot(s) was typical of the Putin era, who strongly identifies himself with tigers (See his recent interview with Naomi Campbell for GQ magazine, in which he speaks about protecting tigers), and now also with a Leopard unidentified by the Wildlife Fund: the ‘leader of the nation’ has spoken — the voting majority obeyed. The Duma elections, regional elections, presidential elections, the Olympic Games mascot elections – the likeness of theses situations is amazing, and it is the likeness to the face we know all too well.

But it was the result of the TV-set party voting. The Internet party’s opinion is different: it does not like the Leopard. The same is true in real life – the Internet party does not like the TV-set party United Russia, and it does not like Putin either. They say Dmitry Medvedev actually voted for a Dolphin…

Responsibility, too, is divided, just as it is in Russian real life politics: the ‘Duma-duumvirate’ rules over Russia; the triumvirate – Leopard, Bear, and Hare – rules over the Olympic Games. The question is why is it a triumvirate, why not a tandem? Is it because the Russian people traditionally like to form groups of three? And, if it is indeed a triumvirate, who does the Hare represent – Patriarch Kirill, Sobyanin, Sechin, for that matter? Who is the third one?

There is no answer to that question. For starters, we need to clearly identify who the first one is. Who is Mr. Leopard?