The Commander of the Russian Special Forces today was forced to apologise to anxious Russians living in The Ukraine about the slow speed of deployment of his troops to Crimea. Russia’s chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, claimed that the delay causing the 10 brigades of crack Spetsnatz troops to take 25 minutes to get to the capital Simferopol, instead of the usual 5 minutes, was because of a ‘wisecracking American comedian.’

Apparently the entire Russian Army had been watching their favourite American show, ‘The White House Briefing’ when a stand-up comedian claiming to be the President of the United States of America appeared out of nowhere and issued a warning to Russia about serious consequences if they interfered in The Ukraine.

“I’m sorry,” Gerasimov said, “but after hearing that, we all immediately fell about the floor in hysterical laughter, and couldn’t stop for ages. When we finally pulled ourselves together and picked ourselves off the floor we found that the order to invade had been given 20 minutes ago.”

In his defence he added, “When the same comedian said something similar about Syria last year, we didn’t find it so funny. But this time, we finally got the joke – and we couldn’t help ourselves.”