In the Huffington Post this weekend, Simon Shuster takes a look at the anatomy of Putin’s populism. Apparently, Putin told a pee joke during his visit to a beach in the town of Chelyabinsk on Friday:

Upon noticing that there were no public toilets around, the prime minister remembered a joke. “Greggie, go take a swim,” a mother yells. “Mama, why? I don’t know how to swim, and I don’t yet need to pee.” He told this joke later that day at a conference with city’s mayor, and then he changed his tone and added, “It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.”