According to Russia’s English-language television news Russia Today, the Kremlin thinks that Julian Assange is too important for a Time Magazine Person of the Year and needs more substantial recognition for his work — like, say, sharing the stage with Barack Obama with a Nobel Peace Prize.  The Week has the lengthy video that is unintentionally hilarious as it explores whether the US or Israel’s assassins will get to Assange first.  This comes from Russia, remember:

Let’s first look at RT’s contributors on this topic. Ray McGovern is both a Truther and a longtime conspiracy theorist regarding Israel, which explains why he leaps to the notion that America’s “friends” (the scare quotes are his) will rush to assassinate Assange.  Perhaps Alexander Litvenenko could clarify the Russian position on the notion of assassinations  — oh, wait, he can’t, having been killed by a slow-acting poison after dissenting from the Putin regime while living in London.  Boris Berezovsky could speak to it still, no thanks to the assassins he narrowly avoided on at least one occasion.

Wayne Madsen is cut from the same cloth, having argued for Trutherism as well as the notion that the USS Cole was hit by an Israeli missile and not al-Qaeda terrorists.  He also claims Israel controls CNN, that the 2009 swine flu was man-made, and even provided an argument for Birtherism.  In this clip, he calls Assange a “patsy” — an odd word for someone who has openly bragged of the release of American documents — and says that the US will kill him when he outlives his usefulness like … Lee Harvey Oswald.

So shall we take this paranoia party seriously and think that the Kremlin wants Assange to get a Nobel Prize?  Well, RT is funded mainly by the Russian government, not exactly known for its tolerance of heterodox opinions in the media, so it seems that’s the story it would like to circulate.  They may want Assange to get it posthumously, however.