Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will be regarded as one of history’s villains.
Since the Ukraine incursion, he’s been compared with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Ex-KGB agent
The 69-year-old ex-KGB agent has been president of the Russian federation for most of the last two decades.
Russia’s economy is as small as its territory is vast, just 2% of the world’s output, about the size of Spain’s.
Yet it stretches across 11 time zones, and is rich in natural gas, oil and other resources.
This modern-day Czar, more concerned with imperialist ambitions than the economy, launched an all-out military invasion of Ukraine this week apparently because he did not agree with its goal of joining NATO.
It’s now morphed into him wanting to unseat the Kyiv government, and in a more extreme scenario to upend the modern world and snuff it out with nuclear weapons.
Soviet empire
The pretext is Ukraine which he does not consider a legitimate state. His belief hinges on the conviction that Ukraine, once part of the Soviet empire, does not have the right to decide its future and the alliances it joins.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, which many thought was unlikely to happen, some questioned whether it was wise of the military alliance to invite the former Soviet state back in 2008.
For weeks, officials in Moscow scoffed at suggestions that Russia would invade despite having 130,000 troops amassed at Ukraine’s borders. They said “hysterical ” Western politicians and the international media were fantasizing about an invasion.
Slavic love feast
Then before dawn on Dragobete, a Slavic name for a Romanian love feast, Vladimir V. Putin sent his troops in.
The Russian leader’s resentment has festered over the years and he has reportedly grown more isolated of late.
Western leaders say he has changed for the worse since the pandemic started and has become more inward-looking, obsessed with Ukraine.
Such is his preoccupation with his fellow Slavic neighboring state that he blamed former Soviet leaders Stalin, Lenin and Khrushchev for giving it „territorial gifts.”
‘True’ Putin
On Monday, millions in Russia and elsewhere got a glimpse of the ‘true’ Putin who revealed his inner self in a 55-minute address.
Gone was Poker face Putin the world has seen with President Macron and German Chancellor Scholz.
Instead, we saw an aggrieved, sullen, angry Putin who berated and terrified his underlings. He sat at a grand table in a palatial-like room out of the 19th century behaving like a 21st century Czar venting historical grudges.
By Saturday, three days into the invasion which took the world by surprise and has drawn international condemnation, there was an attempt to impose a news blackout in Russia.
Russia’s media-monitoring agency ordered media outlets to delete reports using the words “assault,” “invasion,” or “declaration of war” to describe Russia’s massive, unprovoked military incursion.
State media has been covering Russia’s recognition of two separatist states, not the military onslaught, so Russians are kept in the dark about the war waged in their name.
Some anti-war protesters were detained before they left home to demonstrate against the invasion, reports said. Facebook has been closed.
TikTok
Outside Russia, Generation X has taken to Instagram and TikTok to try and reach the Russian strongman and coax him out of military action.
„Hey, Vladdy Daddy, please don’t start WW III,” and “Daddy Putin, please cancel the war” were typical entreaties.
“Hey Baby Daddy, look into my eyes, you’re better than this,” said another, as if they were appealing to a troubled child.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will go down in history an autocrat who stayed too long in office, and surrounded himself with yes-men as all dictators before him have done.
Better Russia
He had a chance to build a better Russia for his people who deserved a brighter future and a country that was respected on the world stage.
He will be remembered for the Ukraine invasion, for bloodshed and the loss of life just because he was fixated on another country he wanted for himself.
He will be remembered for oppression and of stifling freedom and growth, of squandering the massive opportunity he once had, one which his nation surely deserved.
