Today, Vladimir Putin turned 70. A considerable age, but not critical — too soon for dementia to develop.
Many people of his age keep writing scientific papers, engineering engines, running companies.
And they don’t have a team of doctors watching their health, or Kremlin’s nutritionists to build their diets.
But judging from his actions in the last 7 months and a half that show fewer and fewer traces of reason or logic,
and by his speeches that sound more like schisophasic gibberish, it’s getting hard to believe in his sanity.
A man in 2022 cannot make a decision to start a war of invasion.
A sane man wouldn't send less than 200 000 soldiers to try and occupy a country with forty million people.
A normal man would allow an oligarch bandit to come to prisons on a helicopter to recruit prisoners there.
To recruit not into the Russian army, but into his personal army under his personal control.
A normal man wouldn't speak to the whole world and call modern Germany and South Korea territories occupied by the USA.
Many try to explain the president's behavior
with some sort of mental disability. But they’re all speculations. Everything that we know about Vladimir Putin
shows us not a psycho, but an epitome of mediocrity. Find your graduation picture from school and you’ll find some
classmates that studied alongside you for ten years and you can’t remember a thing about them.
Not a good student, not a poor student, not a bully, not a nice guy, not an outcast. Nobody.
MEDIOCRE PUTIN
Special services around the world value people like this. Equally invisible and unnoticeable in any environment:
be it a book club meeting or an underground terrorists’ gym. Putin’s entire career was built in nomenclature systems.
During his whole life until his unbelievable career rise in 1998-1999th he was a part of strict hierarchies.
He was always an assistant, a deputy, never a man to notice and remember. He was always someone’s shadow.
Never and under no circumstances an uncontrollable bloodthirsty cutthroat would be able
to build himself a career in such systems, his job was to carry out the will of others, not his own.
If they’d tell him to cut off people’s heads, he certainly would, but it would be specific heads in specific quantities
and while doing that, he would be more interested in the size of the quarterly bonus than in the process of cutting off
people’s heads, it’s because of his invisibility and promptness, not because of an outstanding intelligence
or integrity, he was chosen to become a successor to Yeltsin, who wanted someone with no big ambition,
which ensured his own safety. Because of his mediocrity, Putin had the support of oligarchs and nomenclature workers
from the office of the president; they didn’t expect purges and redistributions of property from a man like him.
And what’s equally important, he didn’t have important connections, so he was a compromise
figure for all interest groups involved. To see Putin as some kind of a demiurg who could submit everyone to his will
because of his outstanding personal qualities is to make him a big and a completely undeserved compliment, in a different
country and era, Putin, after having served a term or two as a president, would have ended his political career and would
either retire or become a target of criminal investigations or the press.
But it was Russia, a country in which institutions of democracies were only beginning to develop.
A country that inherited people’s attitudes towards power and people in power from the USSR.
After briefly enjoying freedom and independence, half of the countries built on the remains of the USSR have chosen
themselves new General Secretaries, placed rugs under his thrones and began bowing to them,
praising the power and wisdom of their new father of nations. At first, Putin didn’t even intend to assume such a role —
he entered the Kremlin under the slogans of the first generation of post-soviet liberals, casually waving
democratic and pro-western slogans, during his first years as a president, he was humbly sitting in the presidential chair,
fearing that the real owners of the country would come back and drive him away.
But the throne of the Great Leader remained empty, there were no other pretenders, and his courtiers kept whispering
to his ear about how great he is and how much people love him.
So he had to get used to the new role.
People from special services are a special kind of people. Not just in Russia.
That’s how special services in all countries work — they often think that their affairs and wishes
are more important than the law, in the movies, James Bond is often involved in pursuits with explosions on civilian roads
or shootings in crowded streets, and executes villains without a trial. Why? Because he is from special services,
and their affairs are the most important affairs in the world, more important than the fates of common citizens in an
overturned car or a destroyed marketplace with falling fruit crates. People from special services often believe
that their tasks, and sometimes even wishes, stand above the laws of their countries.
An american statesman John Edgar Hoover led the FBI, the biggest special service in the US, for almost half a century —
from 1924 to 1972, and he was a contradictory figure. He is often quoted with saying “I could’ve become a president,
but the truth is that a man from special services cannot rule a country without destroying it and unleashing terror against
its citizens, and i know that”. Whether or not Hoover truly said that is not important,
he was never offered the presidential chair. Especially considering how in the 50th,
he and Senator MacCarthy started a witch hunt against the so-called “citizens engaged in un-American activities”.
And in the 60th, he persecuted civil rights activists.
In dealing with political opponents, he used all the power he had, blackmailing them with personal photographs.
Luckily Hoover never became the President. But in Russia, things went differently.
A man from special services, who thought that his affairs are above all law, has become the head of the country
with elites that were used to bowing before Great Leaders,
and were ready to put his portraits in their offices in place of holy icons.
”OUTSTANDING” PUTIN
And Putin soon developed a taste for it. Now he had the power to appoint and fire officials, judges,
and governors at a whim, he could introduce censorship and repression,
he could change the Constitution, he could poison Navalny. He could build palaces, and when caught red-handed,
just ignore it and go on like nothing happened. Those unwilling to obey ended in prisons or in emigration.
Flattering courtiers and priests competed in telling him tales of his divine destiny and his great mission in Russia.
Unfortunately, from the USSR we inherited a system in which great deeds are expected of a leader,
as if he was a protagonist in a movie. Industrialisation, collectivisation, revolution, victory in WW2,
sending a man into space, or just an olympic or the perestroika — previous rulers of this land had something.
And what great deeds did Putin achieve in his country, after being in power for almost a quarter of a century?
None. The May thesis, Putin's plan, what was it all about? Where are the results?
At least Medvedev during his short reign moved timezones, renamed militia into police, fought the war in Georgia,
and created the Skolkovo innovation center, which was a massive corruption scheme,
but at least it showed some desire to follow the path of progress.
Putin, on the other hand, still didn’t have much to show for his much longer reign.
His entire presidency from the Second Chechen War which he inherited from Yeltsin and until 2014
will enter history books as just a couple of sentences.
Now imagine, your closest circle keeps telling you how outstanding you are,
and all you do is driving across the country and signing papers.
The most used sentences that the press used at that period were:
“Putin ordered to deal with it” and “Putin signed a law”.
A hero of pen and paper! After a few years of living like that you might get irritated by those
who know you for what you really are. And that irritation would only grow with time.
PUTIN’S DEEDS
Putin was becoming irritated by whole countries, which considered him neither great, not smart, nor powerful.
And above all, he was irritated with Ukraine. Because from Putin’s point of view, Ukraine wasn’t even a country,
but a rebellious province that dared to dethrone Putin’s puppet Yanukovich and turn towards the West.
What’s worse, that province along with Kyiv had sacral meaning for Putin, because, like it or not,
it is the center of Kievan Rus, our origin.
By the way, one could use the same logic and say that, from the perspective of Kievan Rus,
Moscow was nothing but a rebellious border county. That thought clearly didn’t occur to Putin.
He had long privatized the whole slavic people, the idea of suppressing the rebellion and returning the province under
Moscow’s rule, preferably with Yanukovich as its head, has become Putin’s obsession in both 2014 and in 2022.
But the more Putin fought to subjugate Ukraine, the more it became clear that there are plenty of other countries
in the world that too don’t respect Putin personally and don’t care much about his ideas. Well, nearly all countries.
That’s why Putin’s rhetoric began to change, and in its latest versions we hear: we are fighting not against Ukraine,
we are fighting against Europe, USA, NATO, and the entire “unipolar world”.
That is, against the whole world where people aren’t willing to put his portraits on walls and not giving him enough credit.
Normally, it’s a good thing when your country is enjoying peace and stability, when its people are getting richer
and live their lives without turmoils and disasters.
But Putin, convinced by bootlickers in his own exceptionalism,
desired great deeds, the first of his deeds was the capture of Crimea.
Of course it was paid with the falling of living standards and problems with the international community,
but it has become his great deed: “Putin returned Crimea to us!”.
What’s important is that the annexation of the peninsula was almost bloodless and painless.
The weak response from the West and the lack of military resistance from Ukraine made yesterday's pencil pusher
to strengthen his belief that he has a place among great Russian rulers: Alexander Nevski, Peter the Great,
Catherine the Great, and now, Putin, but years passed and there were no more great deeds.
Supporting separatists in the East of Ukraine that Putin had put so much hope on,
only led to creation of a couple quasi-states with living standards of equatorial Africa,
ruled by warlords, on territories of formerly prosperous regions.
It couldn’t pass for a great deed, even the propaganda forgot about LPR/DPR for years.
But neither the war in Donbass became a complete disaster that could stop Putin from further military adventures.
In addition, people were getting more concerned about the stagnating economy, the suppression of media,
and about palaces that Putin has built for himself, his children, his grandchildren and so on.
As a result, Putin, driven by his resentment towards the opposition, by his hunger for glory, by his conviction
in his historical mission, made a terrible mistake and invaded Ukraine. He made that decision based on words of toadies
and bootlickers who made yesterday's invincible bureaucrat, a true Akaky Akakiyevich, believe in his greatness.
Believing that no fool would dare to test it in practice, they were telling Putin that the Ukrainian state would crumble
as soon as Russian tanks crossed the border. That the AFU would flee at the sound of a gunshot like savages.
But Putin’s army that they themselves were being plundered for 30 years, got beaten near Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy,
and Kharkiv by the army of new Ukraine. Putin could not explain how the army of a country that he denied
the right to subjectivity could repel the invasion of the great conqueror.
PUTIN’S EXCUSES
So what does all that has happened teach us?
History taught us that infernal evil comes from infernal personalities.
You may not understand a single word in German but Adolf Hitler’s speeches still make your blood run cold.
As it turns out, it is not a requirement. It’s enough to take a young country with underdeveloped institutions in one hand,
and a power-hungry mediocrity in another, and there you have it: twenty years later, ministers and deputies,
generals and billionaires, who understand everything, will be digging graves for both the country and themselves.
It turns out that you don’t need to be a man of strong will to destroy a huge country.
All that you need is a lot of free money and lack of resistance. Lack of resistance both outside and within the country.
The story of Vladimir Putin is the story of impunity.
It’s a story about a man whose aggression was always met with futile attempts to negotiate with him
and who never saw a clear rebuff. Russian elites and western governments have created the monster by themselves.
But “never” ended on February 24. And today Putin is celebrating his 70-years jubilee and discovers that he has
none of the things he threatened the world with, he’s celebrating it after having his army killed and after
having lost the war, without a single ally, on the road on which ahead of him is either death or a coup,
because it’s only a matter of time when the fear of consequences among
his close circle will outweigh their cowardice, we don’t know how much longer the world would be giving Putin a free hand
if not for Ukraine. If not for president Zelensky who showed true courage and has become
a true leader of a country at war. If not for Ukrainian generals led by Valery Zaluzhny,
whose professionalism is beyond all doubt. Ukraine is now saving not only itself, Ukraine is saving the world from WW3.
Because if there is one lesson to be learned from WW2, it’s that a world war begins not when you stand up
against a destructive regime. It begins when you indulge it. Capitulation of Ukraine wouldn’t end the war.
Capitulation of Ukraine would end in Putin becoming even more disconnected from reality, in his growing certainty that
he was chosen by God. And then, nothing would save the Baltic states, Poland, or Georgia, nothing would save the war
from war between Russia and NATO. Nobody believed in Ukrainian leadership. Nobody believed in president Zelensky.
But they did it, he did it. They stopped the evil that would become too difficult to stop if they didn’t.
See you tomorrow!