MOSCOW—Arseny Bobrovsky and Katya Romanovskaya are better known to the internet world by their Twitter handle, @KermlinRussia, where their online persona has been described as "a Stephen Colbert-like entity called the Persident of Ruissia"—and yes, the misspellings are on purpose, all the better to lampoon the activities of the Vladimir Putin government, which they perceive as chock full of "lies, thefts and absurdities."
However, unlike many satirists in oppresive countries, Bobrovsky and Romanovskaya don't shy away from the "sex words." "The Russian state doesn’t have to beat you with a stick. We can fuck you up with a carrot, too," read one recent tweet. Their Twitter feed now has more than 50,000 followers
But imagine Bobrovsky's surprise when, on a Monday morning in late January, he walked outside his Moscow apartment building and discovered that someone had strapped a 200 pound cock-and-balls carved out of a tree trunk to the hood of his car—an act that's all the more interesting (and troubling) because both Bobrovsky and Romanovskaya have taken pains, because of their "subversive" writings, to keep people from knowing where they live.
Suspicion has fallen on a pro-Kremlin group named Nashi as the perps behind the giant statue. After all, that was the group that, a few years ago, used a prostitute named Mumu to con local politicians who opposed then-President Medvedev into having sex with her in her apartment—which the Nashi had bugged with audio and video recorders.
But whoever actually did it, the monster cock drew the attention of everyone who saw it—and plenty of them wanted to take pictures of themselves or their friends standing next to the world's biggest dick. Even cars driving by, some with diplomatic plates, also slowed—and occasionally even backed up—to see the strange object.
Finally, Bobrovsky and Romanovskaya had to call a tow truck to lift the sculpture off of their car, and some friends helped the pair drag the cock up to their apartment, where the couple is still trying to figure out what to do with it.
One possibility: A guy offered to buy the thing and move it out of their apartment at no cost to the couple.
"He has a collection of cocks," Arseny explained to a correspondent for the New Republic. "This will be the pearl."
