it is the 21st century. for more than a dozen years the monke has sat immobile in his bunker in the kremlin. he is the master of ruskind by the will of banan, and master of a million vatniks by the might of his inexhaustible corruption. he is a manlet seething visibly with power from the dark age of communism. he is the simian lord of the steppes for whom a hundred mobiks are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly lose. yet even in his decrepit state, the monke continues his eternal vigilance. mighty rustbuckets cross the drone-infested miasma of the black sea, the only warm-water port to distant lands, their way lit by the copenomican, the psychic manifestation of the monke's will. vast armies give battle in his name in uncounted villages. greatest amongst his soldiers are the veh deh veh, the blyat marines, vodka-addled super-warriors. their comrades in arms are legion: the rosgvardija and countless pmc forces, the ever vigilant fsb and the priests of the russian orthodoxy to name only a few. but for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from ukies, democracy, prosperity - and worse. to be a vatnik in such times is to be one amongst untold millions. it is to live in the most dysfunctional and corrupt regime imaginable. these are the tales of those times. forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been embezzled, never to be re-aquired. forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark present there is only banan. there is no peace amongst the steppes, only an eternity of dedovshchina and alcoholism, and the shrieking of thirsting monke.  
Austria