Is it too late to get a translator for MSP Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik before he resumes his testimony in the Karen Read murder trial Monday?

On Friday, the thuggish $211,080-a-year State Police “detective” finally revealed the reason for his abysmal performance, both on the witness stand and as a crack sleuth on the MSP’s elite Rubber Ducky Detail.

Under oath, the Ukrainian drifter admitted that English is not his second, but his third language. Bukhenik hails from the old Soviet Union, lived there until the age of 9. Apparently his assimilation into civilized society has been somewhat less than complete.

You can take the boy out of the USSR, but you can’t take the USSR out of the boy.

Am I right, Comrade Bukhenik?

The reformed Red made this confession Friday morning. In his customary pidgin English, he had been telling defense attorney Alan Jackson about his “theories” of the Read persecution, er prosecution.

Bukhenik had mentioned his “theories” at least twice, so Jackson didn’t think it was a stretch to ask Bukhenik a simple question:

“You know what the word ‘theory’ means?”

To which Yuriy replied:

“I’m sorry, English is like a third language for me. So if you can bring up the Webster’s dictionary I can read it out.”

Jackson did a double take.

“You want me to pull up the Webster’s dictionary to define a word you used in an answer about 40 seconds ago? ‘We were working off a theory.’ Quote unquote. You said it, not me!”

For the record, here is one of the times Comrade Bukhenik used the word in his testimony, less than a minute before his tenuous grasp of the English language failed him yet again.

All dialogue guaranteed verbatim:

“Utilizin’ dat information wit’ de evidence at dat point dat we had was a broken cocktail glass so the theory would be why is the cocktail glass broken? Because it came into contact wit’ da victim —”

So far it’s been a catastrophic cross-examination for Bukhenik. And Jackson hasn’t even started asking him yet about the worst miscarriages of justice in the Commonwealth’s ongoing frame-up.

But someone must serve as the fall guy for DA Meatball Morrissey’s calamitous overreach. Yuriy drew the short straw this time, following in the footsteps of his ex-partner, Trooper Michael Proctor.

After the first trial, Proctor was fired from the State Police. For his own despicable deeds with Proctor, so far Bukhenik has only forfeited five vacation days. Perhaps playing the role of patsy this time around is part of the deal for him to keep his phony-baloney job.

Bukhenik’s difficulties with the English language may explain at least in part the State Police’s staggering incompetence. Do you remember how in the first trial, yet another low-IQ statie, one Joseph Paul, explained how he reached his deductions about who did what to whom.

“It was told to me by the crime scene,” Paul testified, haltingly.

To which defense attorney Alan Jackson incredulously responded, “The crime scene talked to you?”

“Yes.”

“Did the crime scene say anything else?”

Paul, slack-jawed, stupefied, stared back at Jackson.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

I mention this only because Yuriy had a very similar experience as Paul at the crime scene, or so he testified on Friday.

It’s all part of what Jackson calls the “paranormal” goings on in Canton — inexplicable, impossible deletions of incriminating Google searches, eerie butt dials from cell phones that aren’t in anybody’s possession, etc.

On Friday, Bukhenik was trying to explain, once again, “de evidence.”

“I wasn’t assumin’ anything,” he told Jackson. “De evidence was speakin’ to us.”

De evidence was speakin’ to him? Of course it was! It’s Norfolk County. If only Jackson had asked Yuriy the obvious follow up question:

“Trooper, what language was the evidence speaking to you in at 34 Fairview? Your first, second, or third language?”

Maybe when he goes to any future crime scenes, Bukhenik should take with him a translator app on his phone. That way the app could convert the deductions of “de evidence” into Ukrainian, or Russian, or both.

A translator app would also come in handy when he’s back on the MSP’s Rubber Ducky Detail. He loves speeding around Norfolk County like Sheriff Buford T. Justice, jumping ugly with housewives who’ve had the temerity to leave a tiny rubber ducky on a public bench in Canton or posting Free Karen Read messages on social media.

Yuriy will go full KGB or Stasi on some suburban mom, especially when he’s packing a sidearm on his 50-inch waist. Once last summer, he tracked down a woman who’d had the temerity to make a Facebook comment about the Karen Read trial.

“I was cooking a pork chop,” she later told me, when Yuriy began banging on her front door. As she came out of the kitchen, Bukhenik began channeling his inner Lavrentiy Beria, fantasizing himself a member of Stalin’s secret police as he gave her the third degree.

The woman, who was born in America, not the USSR, was having none of Yuriy’s Warsaw Pact bullying. She chased the knuckle-dragging moron back to his taxpayer-funded cruiser, yelling words that perhaps he could not comprehend.

“You’re going to jail!” she screamed at the Slavic slob.

If only he’d had that translation app on his cell phone, maybe Yuriy could have listened to her admonitions in words more understandable for a native-born Communist:

“You’re going to the gulag!”

One final caveat for Yuriy “Red” Bukhenik:

Comrade, you are a naturalized US citizen. You are here at our sufferance. If you commit any one of a certain number of crimes (think perjury), you can be stripped of your US citizenship and deported back to the Eastern Front.

Do you understand? Or as your countrymen would say: “Ty rozumiyesh?”

Consider that before you’re tempted to, uh, embellish your sworn testimony on Monday. You know, about issues like the inverted video at the Canton PD that you… misidentified… at the first trial.

Beware, Yuriy. You could end up in a trench on the front lines, cannon fodder for Zelensky.

Before you speak, heed these words, which I’m sure you will understand better if I put it in your native tongue:

“Ty mayesh parvo movchaty.”

You have the right to remain silent…

Follow Howie’s coverage of the Karen Read trial on WRKO AM 680 and the iHeart app, 2-6 weekdays.