Vladimir Putin Commentary ‘Thanks For Being So Cool About Everything’ is Satire

Russia's President Vladimir Putin addresses the Federation Council in Moscow's Kremlin on Tuesday, March 18, 2014. President Vladimir Putin defended Russia’s move to annex Crimea, saying that the rights of ethnic Russians have been abused by the Ukrainian government. He pointed at the example of Kosovo’s independence bid supported by the West, and said that Crimea’s secession from Ukraine repeated Ukraine’s own secession from the Soviet Union in 1991. (AP Photo/Sergei Ilnitsky, pool)

An article from preeminent satire website The Onion has a fake editorial from Russian President Vladimir Putin, titled “Thanks For Being So Cool About Everything,” isn’t real.

A number of people believed the article was a real editorial from Putin after it was published on The Onion on Thursday afternoon.

“It’s certainly no easy task to forcefully annex an entire province against another country’s will, so I just wanted to thank you—the government of the United States, the nations of western Europe, and really the entire world population as a whole—for being super cool about all of this,” the fake opinion piece says. “Seriously, you guys have been amazing. All of you. I really appreciate it.”

The Onion has a disclaimer, which reads: “The Onion is a satirical weekly publication published 52 times a year on Thursdays.”

“The Onion uses invented names in all its stories, except in cases where public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental,” it continues.

The article seems to follow a similar theme explored by The Onion in previous fake opinion pieces by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which are titled “Hi, In The Past 2 Years, You Have Allowed Me To Kill 70,000 People” and “So, What’s It Going To Be?” 

But on social media sites, people apparently believed the satire Putin op-ed.