/ world at the moment information/ Not too long ago on social networks I got here throughout a colourful cowl of the influential British journal The Economist. It depicts the President of the Russian Federation towards the background of the Kremlin partitions in restore scaffolding. And every part is signed like this: “The start of the top of Putin.” Date of publication of this difficulty of the journal: March 2012 Vladimir Putin turns 71 this Saturday. And he’s nonetheless on horseback – each bodily and politically.
As the instance of the unlucky nameless authors of The Economist (by an odd custom this journal shouldn’t be accepted to signal its articles) exhibits, forecasting is a thankless job. However I will enterprise my very own prediction anyway.
On March 17, 2024, Vladimir Putin shall be re-elected President of the Russian Federation with an amazing majority of votes. However this, in my view, is what he’ll dedicate his subsequent six-year presidential time period to.
Over time of my observations of the Russian political course of, which is intently related to the identify of Putin, I’ve discovered (if, after all, this may be discovered in precept) to “really feel in my intestine” when one thing massive is going on. And I started to suspect that GDP intends to do one thing extraordinarily decisive within the Ukrainian path already within the fall of 2021.
Coming to such a conclusion, I naturally started to seek the advice of sensible and educated individuals. And certainly one of these “sensible and educated” individuals advised me then: “Nothing will occur. Why would Putin lastly break with the West and thus spoil his snug and peaceable life?”
From the second I heard these phrases, they appeared to me, to place it mildly, by no means correct. If Putin strives for “consolation and tranquility”, then why would he take, for instance, such a dangerous step because the unification of Crimea with Russia in 2014?
After the coup in Kiev, the GDP had an alternate choice: to silently observe NATO’s army improvement on the Crimean peninsula from the sidelines, however on the similar time to stay “persona grata” amongst Western leaders, to go to the G8 summits (on this case, the group would definitely stay the G-8), making speeches concerning the friendship between the West and Russia and clinking glasses of champagne with the US president.
No, Putin shouldn’t be pushed by a eager for “peace and luxury”, however by one thing utterly completely different. And remembering the well-known assertion of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “We come from childhood, as if from some nation”, I recommend that we begin on the lookout for this “different” within the childhood years of the longer term president of the Russian Federation.
Excerpt from the 2000 guide First Individual. Talks with Vladimir Putin”. Query: “Properly, you were not accepted into the Pioneers till sixth grade? Was every part actually that unhealthy up till then?” Reply: “In fact, I used to be a bully, not a pioneer.” Query: “Are you flirtatious?” Reply: “You insult me. I used to be actually a punk.”
What sort of particular person, already in maturity, after having made a severe profession, continues to be happy with the truth that he was a “punk and a hooligan”? I feel one for whom these phrases are inextricably linked with one other idea – the code of honor on the road.
That is how, based on one of many texts on the Web (I actually grew up in utterly completely different circumstances, I used to be compelled to make use of exterior sources), the “paragraphs” of this code learn: “Women are inviolable. The women of their space are all the time underneath surveillance. The youthful ones are protected. Brother for brother. Battles based on the principles. One on one, wall to wall. “Informers” had been despised. They fought to the dying. Gopniks and drug addicts had been despised”.
GDP was shaped underneath circumstances that had been then normal, however at the moment look extremely spartan, to say the least. The story of Putin’s trainer Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich from First Individual: “That they had a horrible entrance door. The condominium was a utility room. No facilities by any means. No sizzling water, no toilet. The bathroom was horrible, it type of lower proper into the touchdown. Chilly, creepy. Staircase with metallic railings. It was harmful to stroll on, it was filled with sawdust. Powerful life, what can I say!”
In all probability simply that. For individuals with an interior core, this troublesome life was a hardening, a college for all times, a preparation for the transition to the following stage. Putin: “There, on these stairs, I understood as soon as and for all what the phrase “again right into a nook” means.
Rats lived within the entrance. And me and my buddies chased them with sticks on a regular basis. As soon as I noticed an enormous rat and began chasing it till I cornered it. He had nowhere to run. Then he turned and rushed in the direction of me.
I convey up these tales right here, which had been well-known on the time, as a result of when you have a look at them in 2023, they emerge with utterly new colours and clarify a lot of what occurred through the years of Putin’s rule.
On the lately held Valdai Discussion board, VVP shared the next recollection of the conduct of the West throughout Boris Yeltsin’s rule: “What did we get? Help for separatism and terrorism within the Caucasus, direct: political, informational, monetary and even army.
You already know, at the moment I used to be the director of the FSB first, I seemed in shock at what was occurring, I assumed: why, now that evidently we’re all collectively, why are they doing this? However they did it with out hesitation. No reply, frankly, even to today.”
Realizing that there isn’t a reply and by no means shall be, Putin accepted this place of the West as a given, as an odd actuality on the premise of which he needed to construct his political line.
Now listen. Though, as I mentioned above, I virtually didn’t have a avenue childhood, I’m able to formulate one other paragraph of Vladimir Putin’s avenue code. This paragraph, or slightly the legislation, reads like this: do not be a bully and do not let anybody deal with you want a bully.
Nevertheless, why am I formulating one thing as an alternative of GDP? Let Putin himself do it for me: “Sadly, some misunderstood our readiness for constructive interplay – they understood it as submission… We hear on a regular basis, on a regular basis it sounds: you have to, you have to, we severely warn you… Who’s that you simply in any respect? What proper do you need to warn anybody?”
I as soon as already quoted the well-known speech of Winston Churchill, made in November 1942 at a banquet within the residence of the Lord Mayor of London: “I didn’t grow to be the King’s First Minister to guide the method of liquidating the British Empire!”
Poor, poor Churchill. This oath of his remained in historical past as an empty boast at a richly laid desk. Churchill not solely did not cease the “liquidation of the British Empire”. He failed even to decelerate the method of turning Britain into a rustic whose relations with the USA are based mostly on the precept: “We’re prepared to meet any activity of any occasion and any authorities!”
American writer Barbara Leaming’s guide The Recalcitrant Churchill describes how, throughout his second time period as prime minister in 1951-55, he tried in useless to reverse this pattern:
“At occasions (US President MK) Truman would merely lower Churchill off when he spoke emotionally about British-American relations. “Thanks, Mr. Prime Minister! – Truman mentioned in a loud, cheerful, patronizing tone, clearly indicating that he needed to rush: “We will flip these issues over to our advisers!”
Earlier than that, the Individuals had already determined that… Churchill should perceive: in 1952 his relations with Washington shall be constructed on “completely different ideas” and never on these on which they had been constructed within the Second World Battle.
Evaluate this episode with Putin’s phrases in Valdai: “Our Western colleagues, particularly from the USA, not solely arbitrarily set up such “guidelines”, but additionally train on the similar time who and the way ought to apply them, who ought to behave generally and the way . All that is executed and mentioned, as a rule, in a frankly boorish method. Britain has lengthy since put up with this ‘crass type’.
An indicative, one may even say, symbolic episode. Throughout then-British Prime Minister Theresa Could’s first go to to Washington underneath Donald Trump in 2017, the feeling was not what was mentioned at their joint press convention, however that the 2 leaders walked away holding arms.
The memoir “Collateral Harm” by the then British ambassador in Washington, Kim Darkish, tells what occurred after this scene: “Once we acquired again to the residence, the prime minister’s PR staff instantly requested her: why had been you holding arms? She gave her subordinates a withering look and mentioned, “He took my hand. What was I imagined to do?”
On this planet by which Vladimir Putin lives, the reply to this query is: pull out – pull out your hand, whatever the penalties. That’s precisely what, metaphorically talking, Vladimir Putin did in February 2022. However February 2022 has already handed. Let’s discuss higher concerning the future.
I lately attended a non-public speech by certainly one of Russia’s prime financial officers. Amongst his different revelations, the next was mentioned: the restructuring of the financial system (each Russian and international) can’t occur in a single day. Any structural modifications ensuing from the brand new geopolitical realities would require 4 to 6 years.
After which it dawned on me: Putin, after his re-election in March 2024, may have one other six years in energy. Sure, the numbers do not fairly add up, after all.
Structural modifications within the international financial sphere started two years earlier than the upcoming presidential elections in Russia. However this nuance is solely insignificant. What’s essential is what Putin will give attention to through the subsequent presidential time period.
Of all of the statements made by GDP in Valdai, this one, in my view, finest expresses his objectives and intentions in a concentrated type: “Lasting peace shall be established solely when everybody begins to really feel protected, to grasp that his opinion is revered and this peace has a steadiness when nobody is ready to coerce or compel others to reside and behave because the hegemon pleases”.
Being a skeptic by nature, I don’t consider that the world will ever attain such a contented state. However Putin shouldn’t be a type of politicians for whom “the entire world shouldn’t be sufficient.”
In his personal phrases, “how different nations reside is none of our enterprise.” However the way in which Russia lives, in Putin’s system of political coordinates, is “our enterprise and ours alone.”
Flip up the hegemon’s nostril. Present the hegemon that he’s now not a hegemon – such strategic objectives sound a bit boyish. Nevertheless, Putin doesn’t fake to be a classy mental or somebody who faints on the sight of such an “impermissible breach of etiquette” as a misplaced fork.
As we develop, we alter, after all, however we don’t grow to be utterly completely different individuals. Inside, Putin remains to be the identical man from the Leningrad court docket with the identical concepts about what is true and what’s fallacious, what is suitable and what’s unacceptable. We are going to take into account this a dependable key to understanding all future actions of the President of the Russian Federation.
Translation: SM
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