Oh, yes. Don’t forget the old fakes of a crucified boy and a plot of land with two slaves.
Doesn’t it smack of schizophrenia?
Mind you, this is hardly surprising. After all, Putin has been raving ever since he came to power 16 years ago.
The first and unthinkable scandal in recent Russian history erupted when the then Petersburg cutie was appointed head of the Federal Security Service (FSS) with the assistance of Chubais. It remains unclear whether those were the first symptoms of a new disease, or whether the disease was already progressing, but the fact is that Putin decided to “wipe out” Boris Berezovsky, who was an oligarch close to the then-President Yeltsin. Putin’s failure to wipe out Berezovsky is well known - FSB assassins-to-be sided with the oligarch and gave Putin away.
It created a lot of uproar, and Putin’s resignation seemed inevitable. It was not the case, however. Putin appeared on TV and, not batting an eyelid, says: “Mr. Beresovsky, get something to do.”
The failure with Berezovsky did not affect Putin’s career in any way. Yeltsin, whose strength was leaving him, decided to make the short judoist his successor, which he lived to regret bitterly. Today everyone knows that Putin lied. The participants in the plot were murdered for a reason. These included Litvinenko, who was murdered in London.
After that Putin was elected prime minister. With presidential elections ahead of him, what did the KGB serviceman from Petersburg do?
… A month later he began to blow up houses. He started off with Buynaysk, then switched to other places, including Moscow. He discontinued this activity only after he mucked up in Ryazan. The residents of one residential building in Ryazan saw FSB officers bring sacks filled with a powerful explosive – cyclonite. They called the police, thus preventing a terrorist attack. A huge scandal broke out. The NTV TV channel showed videos taken at the scene of the planned crime. The event was widely discussed on talk shows. Surprisingly, it was the interior minister whose people nicked the mass killers rather then the FSB head, who was behind the explosions, and who had to resign.
Did that stop Putin? No. Using treachery, cynicism and lies, he achieved what he planed to achieve by blowing up residential buildings. He tightened the screws in Russia, succeeded in intimidating the right- and left-wing opposition, jailed Khodorkovsky, did away with independent media, killed several journalists, etc.
The next step was the ignoble Chechen war. Putin had to discredit Chechen political leaders, in particular Chechen President Dudaev. Many sources reported that it was the main reason why Moscow started to support the militants headed by Basaev. These militants later attacked Dagestan. That was followed by massive air strikes on cities and towns, carpet bombing that wiped dozens of settlements off the face of the earth, and artillery strikes with Tiulpan self-propelled mortars and Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launcher systems. Massacres…
Seas of blood. However, the West remained silent in the face of the appalling atrocities committed by the Kremlin leader, only occasionally saying things like “Vladimir, calm down.” Who knows? If they had imposed sanctions, the terrible empire, which has been drinking its neighbors’ bloods for hundreds of years, might have collapsed.
Unpunished and elated by his success, Putin got into more mischief. He took Botox injections and showed himself to the world as a macho, riding horses topless and leading flocks of migrating cranes through the skies.
However, history had no use for a macho man. And soon the irony with which Putin’s peers treated him became unbearable. Even the Russians, who seemed to show due reverence for him, started to murmur in discontent. Putin failed to achieve economic growth in a country with untold natural resources – half of Russians continued to live in barracks with no toilets. A good two thirds of the people continued to use timber for heat, singing “although Russia seems to have everything, the people have nothing to eat.”
Then Putin had an idea: to go down in history he had to tackle more broad-scale issues, such as deciding the fate of nations. Just as Stalin did.
The new Russian Fuhrer started off with Georgia, the homeland of his idol. He razed Tskhinvali to the ground and blamed it on Saakashvili. There was one problem, however: George Bush was in office at that time. The simple Texan decided not to wade too deep into Putin’s plotting and said flatly, late as it was, that if Putin’s tanks went into the direction of Tbilisi, U.S. aircraft would take off. That worked, Putin got scared and stepped backed. However, when Bush left office, Putin’s fear of retribution left as well.
Hitler’s ideas also turned out to be useful later: mimicking Hitler who started the Second World War under the pretext of “protecting” the Germans in Sudetenland and in Poland, Putin sent in his troops to the Donbas allegedly to protect the Russians there. Hitler quite successfully killed people, including Germans, in concentration camp crematoriums. Putin didn’t bother with crematoriums, burning people – including, of course, Russians – in their homes, in villages, towns, cities, on buses, at bus stops, and even on planes, day and night, with Buk air defense systems and with Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launcher systems.
While doing that, Putin is trying to mask his activities with outrageous lies. Truth be told, today very few people believe khuilo (dickhead), as Ukrainian football fans aptly nicknamed him. This mistrust is manifested in the proverbial sanctions.
Ukraine has done an incredible thing – it has unmasked Putin, terrifying the whole world. It has shown that world leaders have been dealing with a sick, treacherous, cynical and mean person for one and a half decades.
Immediately, everyone, apart from Kin Jong-un and a few other heads of undeveloped countries, turned their backs on him.
Even his own friend and partner, Belarusian President Lukashenko, became more cautious with the Russian bear. And his old Kazakh friend Nazarbaev openly asked Obama to exert stronger pressure on the schizophrenic.
What global leaders will do is still unclear. Although they have already refused to have anything in common with Putin, they have not yet decided to apply policy of force. Even after the massive shelling of Mariupol, Obama said that the Donbas conflict could not e resolved militarily. These words were repeated on Monday by the new NATO Secretary General.
…Some people still have illusions about Putin, as people did about Hitler in 1939. Illusions that things will work themselves out somehow. Illusions that Russia could be lead to the negotiating table, and that sanctions could be quitely lifted.
It’s naive to think that. Seasoned hunters know that trying to stop and to chase away from people’s home a bear that has already tasted blood is a futile exercise. The only way to stop such a bear is to kill it.
Nikolai Babych
