Last weekend, President Donald Trump’s legal team scheduled a conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, raising questions about whether they actually intended to hold it at the Four Seasons Hotel. However, in a less widely reported story, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counsel scheduled a conference at Kremlin Dry Cleaners, a laundry business just outside Moscow. 

In a follow-up conference earlier this week, Putin made an official statement regarding the possible faux pas: “I fully intended to hold my conference at Kremlin Dry Cleaners. They are a great business. I sent them my pants after I rode that bear in the lake, and they did a great job. I could have held my conference at the actual Kremlin. Wait, I really could have.”

Critics might easily dismiss this move as laziness or incompetence on the part of the Putin administration, but Putin’s supporters have defended this decision, claiming that Putin and his team simply wanted to promote businesses that glorify the Russian state. However, upon further investigation, it has been revealed that a staffer on Putin’s team simply put in a Google search for “Kremlin,” and “Kremlin Dry Cleaners” was the first result. Nataliya Kuznetsova, the staffer in question, agreed that it was a hilarious mixup. However, the next morning, she disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Despite this, Lev Yefimovich, the owner of Kremlin Dry Cleaners, is quite pleased. “This week, I am pressing five times as many shirts as usual,” Yefimovich said. Other businesses are also hoping to cash in on what seems to be a case of mistaken identity.

“Hey, maybe soon we will have our moment in the sun,” said Igor Shevchenko, owner of Red Square Tiling.

“I look forward to the day when we can get customers from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk,” said Sergey Vaisolovskiy, owner of Winter Palace Upholstery.

Since the controversy, Kremlin Dry Cleaners has updated their slogan to “You have dirty laundry? Kremlin will take care of it.”

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

Contact Charlie Kogen at kogen ‘at’ stanford.edu.