Olga Slegina was detained by police in Nalchik, southern Russia, after making a comment to a waitress in a canteen at the sanatorium where she was a guest. Shamefully, the waitress informed the authorities.

Zelensky, 45, had a career as a comedian before becoming Ukraine’s president in 2019.

The officer who detained Slegina told her: “You have no right to praise him because he is our enemy.” Her case is the latest in a series of Soviet-style denunciations of innocent people since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

More likely to discredit the country’s military, however, are incidents such as that which occurred last night in which a Russian supersonic warplane inadvertently fired on one of its own cities, Belgorod, damaging buildings and causing a large blast.