The Russians are joyfully reporting the following news (the text was obviously translated from Russian with Google Translate, so it sounds a little weird):
Foreign Minister of Tanzania Bernard Camillius Membe, who arrived in Moscow on Thursday, January 15, called Russia a superpower. As informed TASS, he said at the talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
“Of course, Russia is a superpower. We will always be reminded of Russia’s historic role that it should play,” said Membe.
I never thought I’d be so profoundly sorry for the Russians. It’s just so pathetic, you know? They send their young men to die by the thousand, experience an economic collapse, destroy a peaceful neighboring country – all just so that a guy from Tanzania tells them they are a superpower with a historic role.
Dumb sods.
Clarissa's Blog 
Australia will never be a Super power….cause we are simply super awesome.
LikeLike
Membe is a good friend of mine. I told him to say that.
LikeLike
I had no doubt he was making fun if them.
LikeLike
I’ve also recently had a general and a sargeant in the US army popping up, wanting to connect. West Africa reigns supreme.
LikeLike
I’m glad that Africans, at least, will have something to gain from the Russians’ fresh round of superpower pretensions.
LikeLike
I’m just reading a book on how the war in Rhodesia ended. It’s quite a raw book, not just in terms of visceral sensations and emotion, but in the way it is written, which is in the informal language of eye-witnesses. I did not realize before the incredible malevolence that often took place between the Shona and Ndebele tribes under the force of the guerilla operatives. The Ndebele were Russian trained, more casual and more vicious.
LikeLike
At what point in the last seventy years has Russia’s superpower status ever seriously come into question? This sounds like a pretty bad case of hideous insecurity.
LikeLike
I know! And this insecurity is driving their policy and consuming the country in useless fretting.
LikeLike
Being as that Russia’s economy is now smaller than Spain’s the only thing that makes them a superpower is their military, particularly their nuclear arsenal. It used to be said that the USSR was Upper Volta with Ballistic missiles. But, this is really unfair to Burkina Faso because if Sankara had not been assasinated it is very likely he could have achieved improvements in literacy, medical care, and social equality to rival the accomplishments of the USSR or Cuba without the mass political repression and terror.
LikeLike
I think this is a good place to mention that there is neither medical care nor literacy in Cuba. They were a complete fabrication of the regime. I’ve seen with my own eyes how to sick people are mistreated and the pigsty places where kids go to school. This is not a metaphor. If you go to a Cuban village , yiu will be hard pressed to distinguish a school from a barn. And kids there would be shocked to see a pen.
Great comment, by the way.
LikeLike