Scraps of Moscow (returning to the blogosphere from a hiatus) offers readers the following translation from Vladimir Vladimirovich which cleverly links Russia's recent bout of orange snow to Ukraine's recent bout of orange revolution. Hopefully SOM will continue this effort as the prior translators at the VV site have abdicated their office, much to LR's chagrin (we have previoulsly translated VV, but far more rarely than we'd like).

Once upon a time, Vladimir Vladimirovich™ Putin was sitting in his Kremlin office and waxing his Presidential Skis.

All of a sudden, the tall doors of the Presidential office burst open, and in rushed the deputy chief of Vladimir Vladimirovich™'s administration, Vladislav Yur'evich Surkov.

"Hey, bro," said Vladislav Yur'evich, "Whaddaya doing there?"

"Waxing my skis," answered Vladimir Vladimirovich™. "I'm gonna go skiing. There's a lot of snow, it's real nice."

"Hold off on the skiing," said Vladislav Yur'evich. "We got something strange here."

"Whazzat?" asked Vladimir Vladimirovich™ with alarm.

"They had orange snow fall in the Tomsk, Tyumen and Omsk regions," said Vladislav Yur'evich quietly.

"Orange?!" shouted Vladimir Vladimirovich™ in horror.

"I think it's begun," nodded Vladislav Yur'evich.

"What are we going to do?" fretted Vladimir Vladimirovich™. "But you promised me there was no threat! That nothing orange would happen."

"We're doing our best," said Vladislav Yur'evich calmly. "Look, we kept those tangerines out of the country. But who could have known that it would come down in the snow...we're going to melt it."

"Melt it," said Vladimir Vladimirovich™ tensely. "Melt it ASAP!"

"We'll get it melted," said Vladislav Yur'evich confidently, and quickly left the room.