A campaign group for “better looking Russian brides” has claimed that standards have slipped since the 1990s, and “only the ugly ones are left”. The group, which calls itself Better Russian Brides Now (BRBN), now has over 1,000 members, most of whom you would not want to meet.

Founder Oswald Puback said that he created the group to raise awareness of those slipping standards, and says “Back in the 1990s, you could find yourself a Russian bride from Moscow or wherever and her picture would be well stunning. Yeah, sure, she’d already have a husband over there and several kids, but that was a different kind of woman. These days, it’s all shot-putters called Olga from the Volga and I don’t think they’re putting in much effort.”

“Perhaps all the best ones have been taken?”

Russian Bride website user Dan Mollycoddled from Shytte in Norfolk told the Daily Shame that he has been “on and off the website for about 15 years”, and says “in the past you used to be able to send them money and they’d at least respond to you. These days – they’re mostly munters and they don’t even bother responding. I had no idea that there was a finite number of hot women over there.”

Vladimir Putin, however, has pledged to restore Russian pride in its brides, and acknowledges that while the quality of your average Russian bride may have decreased over the last few years, there are still “plenty of women looking for a middle-aged grease monkey with a job in IT.” He insisted that the export of brides was “Russia’s main industry” for many years, and said that “the fellas are so drunk, we have to send the women somewhere else. There’s loads of them.”

Russian brides have reacted furiously to the claims that they are letting themselves down. 18-stone wattler Irina Borisova from Ekaterinberg said “I have come down from 25 stone to 18 stone in the space of just one week on my profile, and I replace my picture with one of nude supermodel. I will do all I can to support President Putin’s great effort to promote Mother Russia and export its brides for economic benefit of country.”

“But have you consider that average standard of average Western man has gone down also? They have no shame, they even put up real profile pictures of hairy man in vest in front of computer screen. He have no hair on his head. Still, at least he won’t be tanked up on vodka every night and he have good job in IT.”