You Can't Get the Staff...

Russia's President Putin has condemned the killers of prominent political opponent Boris Nemtsov, saying that they had been told to make it look like suicide.  "You just can't get the staff anymore," he allegedly raged during an interview with top Moscow journalist Igor Blimey.  "Ever since the disintegration of the Soviet Union all of the best ex-KGB operatives have gone freelance and get better pay days working for rogue states and organised crime!  We're left with the incompetent dregs!"  Former KGB chief Putin has vowed to hunt down Nemtsov's killers and punish them severely for their ineptitude.  "I ask you - shooting him in the back multiple times - how were we ever going to pass that off as suicide," Igor Blimey claims the exasperated Russian leader told him.  "I distinctly remember telling them that hanging or an electric fire in the bath - I saw that in a Bond movie - would be far easier to sell to the public and press as suicide!  Obviously, people would still have been suspicious, but they wouldn't be able to pint the finger directly at me!"

This isn't the first time that the bungling of Kremlin assassins has left Mr Putin red faced, as he explained to Igor Blimey.  "Let's not forget that business of the bloke in London they poisoned by sticking radioactive isotopes in his tea," he supposedly said.  "For God's sake, who was ever going to believe that was anything else other than an assassination?  Nobody was ever going to believe that it was a health and safety issue at the place he bought the tea.  Not even English cafes are so unhygienic that they have radioactive isotopes lying about in their kitchens to be confused with the milk!"  The Kremlin has subsequently denied that President Putin had ever spoken to Igor Blimey and maintained that the Russian leader had absolutely nothing to do with the murder of Mr Nemtsov or any other dissidents.  "Obviously, if he were to assassinate someone, as a former KGB man, Mr Putin would be able to ensure that it looked like natural causes and that there was no trail liking him to the death," a Kremlin spokesperson opined.  "Not that he ever would be involved in such activities.  Obviously."