Trust Vladimir Putin’s party to turn International Women’s Day into a grotesque punchline, offending even the most hardened cynics. In a macabre act of insensitivity, officials of Russia’s northern Murmansk region reportedly handed out meat grinders to the grieving mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine.

Believe it or not, Russian officials handed out kitchen equipment on a day meant to honor women’s strength, dignity and contributions to society. Moscow would be a ghost town by now if irony could kill.

The symbolism is so on-the-nose it defies satire. Russia’s battlefield tactics have long been described as a “meat grinder,” a euphemism for throwing wave after wave of poorly equipped and barely trained soldiers into the line of fire until the sheer numbers overwhelm the enemy.

The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army in the Korean War also employed the wave tactic in their early campaigns, sacrificing massed troops to overwhelm UN forces. Though the context differs, the strategy shares eerie similarities with Russia’s battlefield approach today.

Myasorubka, the Russian word for meat grinder, carries the same grisly double meaning in both languages. And now, as if to drive the point home with all the subtlety of a missile strike, officials thought it wise to reward bereaved mothers with literal meat grinders as tokens of appreciation.

One might wonder how such an idea made it past even the lowest rung of political advisers. Did no one in the room pause and think, “Perhaps we shouldn’t gift bereaved mothers an appliance that evokes the very fate of their fallen sons?”

Or did they simply assume that in today’s Russia, irony is as dead as free speech? To add insult to injury, the gifts were presented with beaming smiles, flowers and a cheerful message thanking these “dear mums” for their “strength of spirit.” It was state-sponsored gaslighting at its worst: We’ve taken your sons, now here’s a kitchen appliance — Happy Women’s Day!

Predictably, the backlash was swift. Online commentators called the gesture “shameful” and “inappropriate.” But United Russia, ever the masters of Orwellian doublespeak, dismissed the outrage as “callous and provocative interpretations.”

The mayor of Polyarniye Zori, Maxim Chengayev, even had the gall to suggest that meat grinders were given because one woman had asked for one. Because nothing says “compassion” like leveraging a single request to justify an entire campaign of misplaced symbolism. This underscores not just the Russian government’s callousness, but its utter contempt for women.

International Women’s Day has become a global celebration of women’s rights, resilience and progress. But in Russia, it has long been an occasion to paper over systemic inequalities with token gestures — flowers, chocolates, grand speeches. This year, the ruling party outdid itself, making clear what it really thinks of women — not as people deserving of dignity, but as silent, passive recipients of state-sanctioned cruelty.

Of course, Putin’s regime has little use for dignity. It thrives on humiliation, on bending people to its will through fear, coercion and absurdity. In the twisted logic of the Kremlin, a mother who questions the war is a traitor; a mother who accepts a meat grinder is a patriot. And so, on a day meant to celebrate women, the Russian state reaffirms its disdain for them, reducing their suffering to a transactional farce.

In a just world, the mothers of Russia’s war dead would receive not meat grinders, but answers. They would be told the truth about the senseless carnage. They would be given justice, not kitchen appliances. And on International Women’s Day, they would be honored not with hollow gestures, but with real respect and recognition.