Well, being fans of irony, we can’t help but admire our dear friends the Russians who, despite fomenting a tiny bit of trouble in Ukraine, which they apparently don’t consider a particularly big deal, are now threatening to sue their true mortal enemy:

McDonald’s.

Yes, the powers that be in the land of potatoes, borscht and, of course, copious liters of vodka, are threatening a suit to stop Mickey D’s from selling some foods that, the Russians say, contain more fats and carbohydrates than are allowed by Russian regulations.

We are, of course, grievously concerned about the health of our Russian comrades but we wonder if, really, officials in Moscow are whistling past the graveyard. In a report in January of this year, the British medical journal “The Lancet” said that a high number of early deaths in Russia is mainly due to people “drinking too much alcohol, particularly vodka, research suggests.”

According to that research, The Lancet said, 25 percent of Russian men die before they are 55 and most of the deaths “are down to alcohol. The comparable UK figure is 7 percent.”

“Down to,” by the way, is a British term meaning “responsible for,” more or less, as in Mick Jagger singing, “It’s down to me, the way she does just what she’s told …”

Be that as it may, The Lancet did not report any significant number of deaths from that scourage of Russia, The Big Mac.

Still, just as they did when they claimed to have invented baseball, the Russians seem to delight in claiming for themselves things that in reality are ours. Like health problems from … well, you know.