Appointment in Samara

Putin is so short of troops (see below) that he's offering north of a million rubles to anyone who'll sign up, and nearly 4 million to the lucky young men of Samara. That's $47,600 in what Donald Trump no doubt thinks of as real money, and in a country where the average wage is $1,004 a month. Samara is a town in southwestern Russia, near its border with the former Soviet "republic" of Kazakhstan, and not to be confused with Samarra in Iraq, made famous by Somerset Maugham.