Britain has today clarified that it is going to weaken Putin's war effort, not by restricting the provision of UK management consultancy services to Russia, but by promoting them.
'We stand by our earlier statement, that doing business with Putin's Russia is morally bankrupt,' declared a Foreign Office spokesperson, 'but financially it is quite a different story. And that's what counts, obvs. Anyway, in the case of our world-beating management, accounting and PR sectors, that's nothing new. Given that their main purpose in life is to assault their clients with a barrage of Powerpoints and spreadsheets, while simultaneously sucking out all of the cash that their business needs to run and sacking all the lowest paid staff, we feel that they can play a valuable role in our economic punishment strategy.'
'Now is their finest hour' she added, 'better even than PFI, the financial crisis or COVID procurement.'
Meanwhile, the Kremlin is rumoured to be retaliating by launching a huge export drive for its dynamic cybersecurity and data analytics offer under the slogan 'we know what you're searching for'.