Russian President Vladimir Putin is fully responsible for the senseless and bloody war against Ukraine.
Guided by imaginary motives for threats against Russia, the head of state involved two neighboring nations in a war in which there will be no winners, only losers. The president’s decision will cost our country isolation, poverty, and a return to the 1990s, with which Putin is so fond of scaring the Russians. For more than 20 years in power, he has become a dictator who believes in conspiracy theories and has completely lost touch with reality. It is now depriving millions of Russians of their future and taking the lives of innocent Ukrainians. Vladimir Putin must stop the war immediately and resign.
Vladimir Putin has been in the top echelons of power for more than 20 years
During this time, he went from a legitimate and democratic president to an archaic, complex, and bloody dictator. The president’s paranoia, along with the total distrust of others, made him dependent on his closest circle – the president does not receive up-to-date information, but trusts that in the folders with which he regularly manipulates his opinion. The head of state does not have a mobile phone and does not access the Internet – he has lagged behind reality and is trying to govern the country with Soviet methods that are inappropriate in our time.
In 20 years in power, Vladimir Putin has destroyed all the democratic institutions that Russian citizens have worked so hard to build from the very beginning of modern Russia. The country no longer has a system of checks and balances, no opposition in parliament, the Federation Council has long had the status of a “retirement home” / although only 15 years ago it could still block entire packages of laws if regional authorities do not agree /, the independent court was destroyed. Local authorities have become toothless – without the permission of the president, regional leaders, governors, and mayors are afraid to move a finger, which turns them into furniture and hinders decision-making on important issues.
In 20 years, the presidency has changed radically: first, Putin’s promises were hampered by a lack of power, then too short presidential terms, then “unnecessary parliamentary debates”, incomprehensible civil liberties, independent media, and the “fifth column”. and, finally, the constitution, which was urgently rewritten to please the president, with all restrictions lifted, and this gave the aging head of state the feeling that he was an unalterable king.
But there were no real successes in those 20 years. The long-awaited economic power and “normal life” at the level of Portugal (it is to this country that Vladimir Putin modestly orients himself at the beginning of his presidential-tsarist path) have never been achieved. Now the average monthly “net” salary of Russians is one of the lowest in Europe and second only to the poorest country in the EU – Bulgaria. In terms of nominal GDP, Russia has dropped out of the top 10 countries in the last 10 years, with no prospects for improvement. No matter how much the propagandists try to convince us otherwise – GDP with shouts, saliva, and cries on television does not rise.
Who holds whom?
Vladimir Putin likes to repeat that “the West does not benefit from a strong Russia, it wants to keep us.” The problem is that Russia has never been strong under Putin. The Russian economy has remained dependent on fuel exports. There have been no drastic changes in its structure, no matter how hard the Russian authorities try to juggle the numbers when calculating the contribution of different industries. In 20 years, Russia has become a leader in only one industry – internet banking, not thanks to the president, but to entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov, who was not afraid to publicly oppose the war. It is his talent and perseverance (and his team) that have created one of the best internet banks in the world, on whose experience all the world’s leading financial organizations are based today. It is to Tinkov that the Russians should be thanked for being able to perform all banking operations via their smartphones. But what did Tinkov get for his courage and talent? Exile, accusations of treason, and business confiscation.
Russia is a leader in another field – the number of billionaires. But who are these people? Russian analogs of Jeff Bezos, who started in the lowlands, or Jack Ma’s disapproval of work at KFC? No, these are judokas, athletes, former security forces, and just good friends of Vladimir Putin. In 2017, the combined fortune of the president’s closest friends was estimated at more than $ 24 billion. A coincidence? As much as the fact that state-owned companies were distributed to manage Putin’s loyal allies – Alexei Miller / Gazprom /, German Gref / Sberbank /, Andrei Kostin / VTB /, Igor Sechin / Rosneft /, Nikolai Tokarev / “Transneft” /, Sergey Chemezov / “Rostech” /. Just as coincident is the lack of change of government, the lack of economic growth, prospects, and a future in Russia under Vladimir Putin.
The Russian establishment is a threat to Russia and the Russian people. These are poverty, destitution, and problems that are relevant only in Third World countries – be it the AIDS epidemic that the Russian authorities are afraid to talk about, or the lack of access to internal toilets and central sanitation. Russia has huge reserves of gas and oil, but one-third of Russians have not yet seen gas in their homes. Russia is the richest country in the world, but the Russians are some of the poorest people on the planet. Why?
Because for Vladimir Putin, the pursuit of history textbooks as a “unifier of Russian lands and defender of traditional values” proved to be more important than the lives of Russians. The problem is that the president has sunk into history and dragged the entire Russian people, without caring about his opinion. More than 50,000 people have already died in the mystical “denazification” – a term whose meaning is not understood even by Russians supporting the aggression against Ukraine. About 20,000 of them are Russian soldiers, who will be scoundrels and war criminals for the whole world, and after a while – for the citizens of Russia.
Heroism?
Won’t they get up? Will they be our pride? Then why are they so stubbornly hiding them from their mothers, relatives, and friends? Of all the other Russians? Why do their faces hide if “our cause is just and we are defending our homeland”? What are these “heroes” afraid of? Why doesn’t the government send these “heroes” with honors, but cynically hide them or ignore them altogether, pretending to know nothing about their fate? Why did the Ministry of Defense brazenly lie about the use of recruits in the war? Why is he brazenly lying that the Chrysler “Moscow” did not take part in a “special operation”? Why can’t he answer the father of a probably dead sailor, what is the fate of his son? Is this a heroic fate?
Why are the mouths of the “heroes” being silenced and threatened? Why are they forced to turn to the Ukrainian authorities for information about their children, husbands, and fathers? Why are the authorities silent about the “heroes” captured? Don’t we “abandon ours”? Or “the Russians do not surrender”? Or maybe it’s just a fear of panic among Russians when they learn the truth? The truth about the incompetent command, about the almost record losses among the officers, about the problems with the supply, food, clothes, logistics, equipment, and even ammunition.
The Russians are surrendering because they are people like everyone else. Russians are not a special ethnic group or people, there are no good and bad ethnic groups, there are bad people. And our country should know that. Winning World War II, the USSR, and its allies did not destroy Germany, but with problems and mistakes helped the Germans rebuild their country and nation, showing humanism and humanity, respect for their own and others’ freedom – qualities for which they fought. our grandfathers, many of whom later fell into the Gulag for such thoughts.
Peace, freedom, and independence are the main attributes of the Great Victory, but are such goals set by Vladimir Putin in the war against Ukraine? No, the president says and stubbornly proves that an entire nation simply has no right to exist, that it is “Lenin’s invention”, finds a bunch of excuses for its aggression, the ultimate goal of which is as old as the war itself – conquest and imaginary “liberation”. However, the Ukrainians have not asked anyone to release them, they can decide their destiny and perhaps even better than Russia choosing their path of development.
And what are Ukrainians fighting for? For peace in their destroyed homes, for their families, for the freedom of their people, and for the independence of their country. If the power is really in the truth, the “Russian world” can only expect bad news. Neither Russia, Vladimir Putin, nor anyone else has the right to decide for another nation, much less to instill its vision with the help of tanks, bombing, and assassination. NATO threat? In two months, there will be two more full members of NATO on Russia’s borders, and the military contingent around will be many times larger. “Puppet government in Kyiv”? And why are the Russians even excited about this? Russophobia? In 75 days of the war, Vladimir Putin has done more for Russophobia than anyone else in Russia’s history, turning Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine into ruins and Russians into scoundrels, depriving millions of Russians of all hope for the future.
What is the alternative?
If not Putin, then who is? It’s sad to admit, but we have to learn from the “adversary” neighbor – whoever he is, if he’s going to be an actor or a former KVN / Funny and Ingenious Club, Russian TV Humor and Ingenuity Competition, ed. ./. The problem is not who will replace Putin, but that the Russians are not ready to take responsibility for this choice and give up in the hope that “somehow everything will just work out” because “I’m not interested in politics” and “this is not it affects me “, and you know that” not everything is unambiguous “.
But yesterday’s KVN participant turned out to be a true leader of his nation today, he was not afraid and did not hide in a bunker or abroad, he communicates with his people daily and sincerely suffers with them. He persuaded almost half the world to help his country and managed to stop the “second army in the world” with far fewer resources. The Ukrainian people elected Vladimir Zelensky in perhaps not fair, but competitive elections and the president did not disappoint them – 95% of the population supports him – and this is more than according to VTsIOM Russians support Vladimir Putin.
For 20 years, Putin and his entourage have been unable to formulate at least some successful ideology of modern Russia and the “Russian world.” In an attempt to play with nostalgia for the USSR and traditional sections of society that worship Orthodoxy and the church, the Russian establishment has created the infamous Frankenstein, which includes mutually exclusive Soviet doctrines and Orthodox postulates. But the Kremlin has never invented the key element of any ideology – an attractive image of the future. Speakers on TV will begin to prove that Putin’s Russian national ideology is patriotism, but none can formulate, let alone decipher, more than three ridiculous postulates (love of Russia, respect for ancestors, traditional family). . Putin’s Russia does not, and cannot have an image of the future, because this regime is not interested in its citizens, and its goal is self-reproduction and preservation of power. He cannot formulate any concrete images, because he must be responsible for the specific images, and by statute, the king is not accountable to the serfs, who must only obediently obey.
The choice is ours
Unwilling to do so, Russia has once again found itself at a historic crossroads, where one prospect is much more attractive than another. It is time for the Russians to think about whether they are ready for the deal that Vladimir Putin offers them – the destruction of the territory of Ukraine and tens of thousands killed against the future in a rogue state. The answer will be helped by the historical experience to which the head of state likes to resort. Paradoxically, despite the prevailing narrative of “slave consciousness”, modern Russia has experienced overcoming similar crises: in 1991 (the collapse of the Soviet Union, ed. Note) and 2012 / Putin became president again despite mass protests. , organized by the opposition / for ordinary citizens, and in 1993 / the clash between President Boris Yeltsin and parliament, led to an unsuccessful coup attempt / – for those in power. We must not rely on international experience to try not to repeat the mistakes we have made and to prevent a nuclear catastrophe.
The national reflex on current events is inevitable for modern Russia, and the nature of this reflex will be determined by the citizens themselves, and this time no one will decide for them.
