This shouldn’t even be news, but, lo, it’s a Russian media spectacle. Naturally, we have to feed the shit-storm, too. Right around the holiday season, small-town girl and Internet aficionado Nastya Ivliyeva, 13, felt a case of the wants coming on. Specifically, Nastya wanted a new guinea pig to serve as companion to her existing rodent. With gift-giving season just around the corner, the girl could think of no person more able to make her wishes come true than Russia’s president. So little Nastya shot Uncle Dmitry an e-mail via his interactive website asking for a new pet. Really, you’d think the Kremlin would have a spam filter by now, considering. Instead, a series of downright Chekhovian developments followed.

Nastya’s message traveled from the Kremlin (where it was given the president’s official stamp), to the desks of local government clerks in Nastya’s hometown of Kamensk Shakhtinsky, all the way to the girl’s school. There, in the principal’s office, Nastya was reprimanded to the full degree, and her parents were called in for a scolding as well. They were accused of poor parenting, as evidenced by their daughter’s impudence at having bothered the very busy, very serious president with her trivial request. The girl and her family were to publicly apologize and recant the guinea pig request. That’s when Nastya burst into tears and blubbered something along the lines of “I’ll never ask anybody for anything ever again.” Wah wah wah.

Local journalists caught wind of the story and evidently smelled a good photo op. Fourteen dollars later, the girl had a new guinea pig, complete with cage and food, courtesy of the benevolent newspaper.

At the same time, Nastya’s family, outraged by the “bureaucrats” who’d brought their web-savvy little one to tears, were busy drafting another e-message to Medvedev, explaining the situation and demonizing the government clerks. Said clerks read the message (again, no filter?), felt ashamed, and immediately responded. In the very office where the girl and her parents had been publicly shamed days before, local clerks grandly presented Nastya with not one, but two new guinea pigs. Some sources claim an even better scenario: that within two hours of Nastya’s relatives sending their message, there was a clerk standing at the young girl’s door, a rodent cage in his arms.

In case you're keeping score, the guinea pig count at Nastya's now stands at four.

Shortly thereafter, the local paper published word of its good Samaritan stunt plus the hearsay about the backpedaling clerks. Apparently it's a slow news month — who needs to hear about the global economy crashing, anyway? — because bigger media outlets have also picked up the story. Commentators have even moved to speculation about how much money the girl’s parents make. Which leaves us wondering: Could this allegory for Russia’s, uh, “way,” get any more absurd? Or more apt?

Ростовская девочка устроила театр абсурда среди чиновников и журналистов, попросив у президента морскую свинку [newsru.com]