Putin is not a fool, his vision is consistent with both Russian and Soviet imperialism
Several Western analysts are convinced that Vladimir Putin is no longer in possession of his full mental faculties. In short, he would be suffering from real psychic disorders that upset his mind, and one of the reasons offered is that he was hit by Covid without fully recovering.
It is obvious that these are mere hypotheses, since the evidence is not there. It is therefore urgent to ask a fundamental question. Is the Moscow Tsar really a madman, moreover extremely dangerous having an atomic arsenal comparable to the American one? If this were the case, the situation would be even more dramatic than is believed, since the behavior of a madman is completely unpredictable.
To stop him, an internal coup would be needed, planned and carried out in Russia itself, by the military and oligarchs he humiliated even in public. There are, for now, no signs of such a possibility. Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov himself, previously considered a moderate and reasonable person, ultimately did not fail to support him on the occasion of the Ukrainian adventure.
I therefore believe it is appropriate to take another path, which directly links the actions of the former KGB agent to Russian history, past and present. And in this case the support patches exist, and they are also abundant. Recently Putin compared himself to Peter the Great, first emperor of Russia, founder of St. Petersburg and initiator of the great territorial conquests that would have led the country to expand in Asia to reach the Pacific.
It may be that this identification is a symptom of madness, but it seems to me rather the re-emergence of an all-round Russian nationalism, always present in history and based on the conviction that the Russians are responsible for carrying out a salvific mission by incorporating, willy-nilly, the other peoples (not only Slavs) that border with Russia.
However, all-Russian nationalism is not the only factor to be taken into account. Putin has repeatedly stated that he considers the fall of the Soviet Union to be the greatest tragedy of the last century, and has always had words of contempt for Gorbachev guilty, in his opinion, for not having prevented it. In his view, the USSR was simply the heir to the tsarist empire, and its demise caused a decline that Putin himself wants to remedy.
Hence the perception that he intends to start afresh from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to recompose the old Union. The latter, however, was (also) based on an ideological glue – Marxism-Leninism – widespread throughout the world and which now no longer exists. It is evident that Putin did not expect such resistance from the Ukrainians, which he assimilates without hesitation to the Russians. A prisoner of old schemes, he ordered an invasion that exposed the limits of the Russian army. Do not forget that 4 generals are dead – for now. When senior officers have to go to the front it means the troops are in chaos, and that too must have come as a surprise to the Kremlin man.
One thing is certain: the Russian president will not give in unless the military and oligarchs find a way to eliminate him. However, I would like to point out a very important fact, which we often forget because we are impressed by the enormous suffering inflicted on the Ukrainian people. It will be China that will reap the greatest benefits in terms of global power. Note, for example, that Joe Biden, while pledging to defend Taiwan, told Xi Jinping that he considered the current situation "acceptable", with the island only formally independent because it is protected by the American shield. It has therefore again recognized the principle that there is "only one China", and it is an admission of powerlessness.
It is difficult to predict Putin's fate at the moment. He's running for some sort of Nuremberg trial on his own, but he'll only pay for his crimes if he's overthrown. In any case, he will have to resign himself to a secondary role, in tow from Beijing. It is difficult to say whether it is an advantage for the West, given that the People's Republic is much stronger than the Russian Federation. We will in all likelihood have a China-United States duopoly, with Beijing destined to assume an increasingly important role (also in Europe). But let's stop saying that Putin is just a fool.
The post Putin is not a fool, his vision is consistent with both Russian and Soviet imperialism appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/putin-non-e-un-folle-la-sua-visione-e-coerente-con-limperialismo-sia-russo-che-sovietico/ on Mon, 21 Mar 2022 03:40:00 +0000.