Does Vladimir Putin Travel with a Portable Lawn?
The manliest of all Russian men, Vladimir Putin, is taking some heat from Russian bloggers after he paid a visit to the city of Pskov. Just before his arrival, workers planted new lawns, painted some things and brought in new trash cans, then ripped the lawn up as soon as he left. The Telegraph explains the "Potemkin lawn":
Russian bloggers have dubbed the turf the 'Potemkin lawn', suggesting that it might have been "an exclusive lawn from Moscow that travels the country in Putin's baggage".
The Potemkin lawn is a play on the Russian trend of 'Potemkin villages', named after the 18th Century general Prince Grigory Potemkin, who is said to have had whole villages built to impress Catherine the Great when she visited the newly conquered Crimea in 1787.
The video above is worth watching for the song alone.