I start this series with an examination of the man in the hot seat, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who, in one week, has grabbed world attention, yet again, this time for taking steps he says were in defense of his country’s security, but are not in sync with how other nations feel.
Putin played-out his every move in the latest theatre of European conflict for all to see – enemies and friends.
Whether Russia’s moves in the dark of night early-morning last Thursday February 24 was ‘an invasion’ or ‘a provocation’, an ‘insertion’ or ‘invitation’ of troops, or whether the two territories in Eastern Ukraine recognized by Moscow were ‘stolen’ or ‘saved’ – it’s all academic now.
The world has reacted in almost full condemnation of the Russian ‘invasion’, but the basic problem still remains: addressing Russia’s security concerns.
The general view in the Caribbean on what’s happening between Ukraine and Russia is that Putin is a madman who invaded a neighbouring country and is ready to go to war to defend his wrong, a view formed by the predominance of anti-Russian propaganda from the main sources of international news like BBC, CNN and other like mainstream global media with irons in the fire.
But who, really, is Vladimir Putin?
Any understanding of the current Russian president must start from accepting that he’s dead-serious about restoring the global stature his vast rich nation lost in 1991, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was dissolved.
The Russian Federation was treated with utter humiliation under Boris Yeltsin, while most of the 15 ‘new republics’ that replaced the USSR were recognized by the European Union (EU) and embraced within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which then set-out to encircle Russia militarily, to contain ‘The Fallen Bear’.
A major Putin trait is keeping the world guessing – and it’s still evidently a part of his political DNA.
Russia timed its every move on this Ukraine issue with clockwork precision and despite Washington, London and Brussels all claiming to have been reading from ‘Putin’s Invasion Playbook’, they were never able to foil or stop any of his moves.
Troops remained within Russia until the two territories in Ukraine where ‘Russian-speakers’ have been repressed for the past eight years, Donetsk and Lugansk, requested recognition and protection, after which Moscow proceeded, with prior parliamentary backing, through the legal pathway thereby created.
Normally, Russia’s strategy would have been praised as a highly-effective battle-plan impossible to negate, as its enemies were unable to do anything but witness and complain as Moscow proceeded according to not-so-secret plan.
But since it’s the EU, NATO and US that’s been outwitted, outmatched and outmanoeuvred by Putin, the world continues to be fed a fixed and false Western European narrative of Russia’s history, told and painted solely in the convenient context of the ideological underpinnings that preceded and followed World War II (1939-45).
His foes accuse Putin of recklessly fomenting the worst crisis to face Europe since World War II, despite NATO’s unilateral decision to militarily disfigure and dismember the former Czechoslovakia better fits that billing.
As per usual, the warlike scenario in Europe today is being defined differently by the sides involved, through seasoned political narratives and salted versions of history.
But between the selected facts and fake news, the information and propaganda from both sides of the Russia-Ukraine border, it’s been clear all-along that the UK and USA, EU and NATO had (and still have) accepted they could not stop Russia militarily – or they would certainly have.
Instead, they opted for drip-drip, tit-for-tat responses through announcement of economic sanctions seen as having more bark than bite.
Russia for 46 years led the USSR and the Warsaw Pact that kept NATO in check and the Russian Empire that preceded the 1917 Russian Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin did carve its place on the world stage until the last Czar was deposed.
That history of the Russian Empire forever lives long and deep even today in the hearts and minds of Russians, where their history books were not written by the British Empire.
In his quest to Make Russia Great Again, Putin speaks a silent language Ukraine and the rest of Europe understand well, while patently keeping everyone guessing.
Kremlin Watchers have for two decades been trying their hardest to figure-out how he thinks, how his brain functions and what he’s guessing, how to read his words and interpret his actions and tell what he’ll think, say and do next.
But even today, their best guesses aren’t good enough!
The problem is, his foes have been working overtime in overdrive trying to figure Putin out and since they haven’t been able to, they’ve opted to show he’s just simply mad — and bad.
But the reality is that Putin is the most senior statesman in power among all those involved in the current crisis and likewise Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Between 1991 and 2021, NATO expanded its troops closer to Russia’s borders five times; and in the last 20 years Russia has calculatedly reconstructed its powerful military and upgraded it with the most sophisticated weapons to withstand its encirclement by hostile military forces.
In that sense, it is understandable that other nations not in Russia’s position will condemn what they only see in the violation of international norms and conventions.
Russia moved to defend its territory and to protect Russians who found themselves in Ukraine after 1991, but without ‘invading’ Ukraine and taking the entire country over, as Putin’s foes so strongly predicted.
Putin calculatedly executed a military plan backed by smart political moves at home and a diplomatic offensive at the United Nations Security Council (where Russia is currently in the Presidency and with a veto) that simply outpaced and outmatched the US and EU every step of the way.
Like we say in cricket ‘Not-a-man-move!’
And they still want us to believe Putin’s mad…