In the discussions of war between Russia and Ukraine an image of collective Putin emerges quite often.
Not just of the head of the country participating in the conflict, not just of some specific elderly man with name and surname,
but of some force which is stirring this geopolitical stew with one big spoon.
Let’s try to understand what this force is like, recently, The Times has published an investigation “Inside Putin’s bunker”
where the author suggests who and how has influenced the Kremlin’s decisions in the last years and months.
The author thinks that the decision to start the war was influenced by power, paranoia and several old friends of Putin’s.
As the author Owen Matthews thinks, the idea that Ukraine is not a separate country at all, but some artificial entity
destined to become the battlefield for the “right” Russia and the “wrong” West was born not just in Putin’s head.
This is a result of the collective mind of several elderly men.
All of them grew up in the Brezhnev times. And three of them are more or less the KGB creations.
COLLEAGUES
So, Nikolay Patrushev. For the years of Putin’s rule this man got himself a reputation of a “grey cardinal”.
Putin and Patrushev were young officers when they came to the Leningrad KGB office almost at the same time.
While the future dictator learned how to look like no one in particular
(it’s a very important skill for a secret service agent),
his young colleague Patrushev was a rising star and supposed to have a promising future.
By the end of the 90s they swapped roles – Putin’s career went up and Patrushev took the FSB director’s chair.
According to British intelligence, he managed the operation on killing Litvinenko.
In 2008 Patrushev became the secretary of the Security Council.
The observers note that since then the international policy of Russia has become more impatient,
and the internal policy – more repressive.
From the whole Putin’s circle Patrushev is the most “visible” one.
He has more opportunities than the others to explain the Kremlin’s policy in public.
And very often he says completely paranoiac things.
It’s embarrassing to repeat this rubbish about black transplantologists and how the Western governments
sell the Ukrainian orphans, in 2020 Patrushev gave a big interview and publicly announced
that there was a threat for the Russian statehood from the collective West.
Allegedly this threat was fulfilled through the support of non-systemic opposition and meddling with the elections.
And a year later a new version of the national security strategy was published, and its coordinator was Nikolay Patrushev.
In that document the possibility of using “force methods to prevent unfriendly actions threatening the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” was officially accepted.
In fact, it became the preliminary approval for using military force outside Russia.
BUNKER MENTALITY
One more page of this story is connected with the COVID-19 pandemic.
When in April 2020 the whole of Russia went into self-isolation, Putin left his residence in Novo-Ogarevo
under Moscow for his residence in Valday.
To self-isolate. Together with the rest of the country.
Then they spent 85 million dollars for building quarantine lodgings for the President’s staff and visitors.
Everyone who was about to contact the President had to sit in quarantine for at least 2 weeks.
A gymnast Angelina Melnikova who was about to meet the President wondered in social media,
how is it to sit in the room for a week?
The circle of people having access to Putin has reduced to a minimum these days.
And among them was Yuri Kovalchuk.
If Patrushev was and is Putin’s most powerful force manager, Kovalchuk is the most powerful friend.
He owns a billions of dollars fortune, he is the biggest shareholder of the bank “Russia”,
he is a St. Petersburg businessman and a co-founder of the co-operative “Ozero”.
And at the same time, he is a big lover of nationalistic philosophic ideas of Ivan Ilyin.
Months Putin spent with Kovalchuk resulted in the ideological manifesto for the future war.
SWORDS OUT
By August 2021 the narrow Putin’s circle was determined to attack Ukraine.
Perhaps, at that point there wasn’t any clear understanding of what the result should look like.
And it’s not for a fact that there is one now.
Will it be the Abkhazia or the Crimea scenario?
Or will there be a puppet pro-Russian government in Ukraine?
According to Owen Matthews, the most powerful force managers Patrushev and Bortnikov made
the fundamental decision to start the war.
They just needed to start military preparations and ensure Putin’s approval.
In his turn, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lavrov used his last chance to solve it diplomatically.
According to The Times author, Lavrov tried to prevent Putin from jumping into this void.
And in December 2021 the list of demands to the collective West was published
which reminded strongly of the asylum diaries - that is to say, an ultimatum.
The demands were deliberately unrealistic.
According to the source from Boris Johnson’s circle, there was nothing in this document NATO could agree to.
After many months of war, we can say that the British diplomats were wrong in their assessment of that Kremlin move.
They thought that wishing so much Putin would finally settle for less.
The CIA said that Russia was going to attack Ukraine.
But there is a paradox – even the close circle of Putin’s elite didn’t believe that the war would happen for real.
THE KING AND HIS COURT
Starting with that unforgettable and scary Security Council session, the situation became public.
Now, analyzing words, actions, and sometimes face expressions, we can be more or less sure placing the figures on the hierarchy
ladder of Putin’s circle.
February 21st – the Security Council session.
According to the scenario, all the council members had to approve and admit the independence of DNR and LNR.
And the ideologists of this war Patrushev and Bortnikov sounded most convincing.
They talked about the genocide of people in Donbas and the threat of destruction of Russia by the collective West.
All of them played their role. Either active Valentina Matvienko or trembling like a schoolboy Sergey Naryshkin.
February 22nd – the State Duma legally recognizes the quasi-countries.
February 23rd – Putin records the video about the start of a special military operation.
And at 6 am the next day it goes on air. At the same time the biggest war in Europe after 1945 begins.
WHAT IS THE RESULT
What is the result of this idea?
Ukraine, which had a lot of internal problems before the war, is as united as ever.
In Vladimir Zelensky’s rating the numbers 1 and 9 changed their places –
before the intrusion it was 19%, and after – 91% of support. Vladimir Zelensky is a leader of the established civil nation.
And his namesake Vladimir Putin made it quite clear that not Ukraine but he himself is an absolute historical mistake.
This mistake received a country with space rockets and will leave it with a plow.
Some blokes like a big businessman Evgeniy Prigozhin or a tiny Nazi Alexey Milchakov openly lead their personal armies.
During the mobilization more than 300,000 of men were taken from their families and national economy.
First, they were given guns and then the government did everything it could to make them doubt which side to shoot at.
Ukraine’s hatred towards Russia, NATO’s negative attitude towards our country, the threat of Russia’s collapse.
It’s not even that bad that the Russians have been robbed all those years while the government distracted
them with all those fairy tales.
The real disaster is that Putin and Co managed to make those fairy tales real.
People of Ukraine really hate Russia now, and the Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine hates us even more.
The Russian army caused too many deaths and destruction there.
Though there’s plenty of both throughout the whole country which was quite nice to us 10 years ago.
And even more so 20 years ago.
This year NATO has really written in its documents that Russia is no longer a partner but an enemy.
NATO is really moving its military infrastructure closer to Russia and really intends it against Russia.
However, before the war no one was interested in that.
The West really supplies weapons to Ukraine for killing Russians.
The Russians who came to Ukraine with weapons.
Our huge country which has been historically lucky to have no tendencies for collapse for a long time is now at risk.
The notorious Putin’s power vertical enjoyed suppressing all the healthy social forces.
Just to make armed criminals feel the power. Well, that’s nice management indeed!
Till tomorrow!