In case you hadn’t noticed, the world seems intent these days on self-destructing. Floods here, droughts there; blistering heat waves in one hemisphere, record-breaking cold in the other; volcanoes erupting, earthquakes splitting the planet’s surface, practically everywhere. And those are just the “natural” disasters . . . the ones we hardly have time to worry about because we’re so busy creating more and more man-made ones.

And, not surprisingly to anyone who knows me, my focus has been on recent activities as they relate to one specific, very busy individual: The Man Who Would Be Tsar . . . The Ruler of All the Russias (and Beyond) . . . The Kremlin’s Killer-In-Chief . . . Let’s hear it for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin!

“Boo! Hiss! Blow it out your ditty-bag, Vlad!”

Never a contender for Mr. Congeniality in any worldwide contest, he really seems to have outdone himself lately. First, there is today’s two-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine — not something brand new, but a tragic reminder that what he first tried to pass off as a routine military exercise near the Russia-Ukraine border, then a “special military operation” that was supposed to have been finished in no more than a couple of weeks, has actually turned out to be a full-fledged war of attrition against a sovereign nation that has cost his own country billions of dollars in military expenditures and economic losses resulting from sanctions . . . not to mention the lives of more than 300,000 young Russian citizens who had no idea why they were being sent to fight in the first place. Happy anniversary, Vlad.

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But being a world leader also means being an accomplished multi-tasker, and our Vlad appears to be an expert in that department. He has managed, over the past two years, to detain 19,855 of his own citizens at anti-war protests; to chase hundreds of thousands of draft-avoiders out of the country, including an estimated 10% of Russia’s IT workforce; and to designate 444 individuals and groups as “foreign agents and undesirable organizations” under legislation “that allows [the government] to punish individuals and target groups for allegedly receiving support from outside of Russia or operating under foreign ‘influence.’” [The New Atlanticist, Atlantic Council, Feb. 23, 2024.]

He clearly has studied, and learned much from, an earlier leader, Josef Stalin, as to the use of fear to attain his goals and control the populace of his country. But he apparently missed the lesson on long-term effects.

But that’s understandable, considering how busy he’s been micro-managing his fear factory. I have inundated this blog — as shared on my Facebook account — with information about some of the more widely-publicized cases of the victims of Putin’s Purges: the arrests, charges, convictions, and imprisonments of those who have dared to speak in opposition to his regime: Vladimir Kara-Murza, Alsu Kurmasheva, Ksenia Fadeyeva, Lilia Chanysheva, Vadim Ostanin, Sergei Udaltsov, and more recently, Ilya Yashin.

Putin also has found time to roll up a few Americans along the way, as pawns in his little game of “Swap the Prisoners.” Basketball star Brittney Griner was one of the lucky ones; they let her come home in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout. Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich haven’t been so fortunate, and are still cooling their heels in Russian prisons while Putin calculates how much he can get for them.

And of course, there is the long list of those who have already paid with their lives for daring to incur the wrath of the all-powerful Putin: Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politkovskaya, Aleksander Litvinenko, Boris Berezovsky, Sergei Skripal (who managed to survive poisoning, but is now and forever in hiding), to name but a few.

At the head of this list, of course, is the most recent, and most notorious case of Alexei Navalny: pursued, poisoned, survived, returned to Russia, imprisoned, tortured, and now dead “of natural causes” in Penal Colony IK-3 in far-off Siberia. But simply knowing that Navalny is deceased is not enough for Vladimir Putin; the victim’s family must also suffer further by being denied access to his body for a proper, dignified burial. Nice touch, Vlad.

There is also, somewhere, a long list of individuals — many of them former friends or associates of Putin himself — who have somehow managed to irritate the Vozhd (Chief), and ended up falling from a conveniently-located open window, or suffering a sudden “heart attack,” or plummeting to earth in an exploding airplane. Surely, if there exists a survey of the most accident-prone countries of the world, Russia must be No. 1.

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And finally, just ten days ago, Moscow sent hitmen to Spain to gun down a Russian deserter — 33-year-old Maxim Kuzminov — who fled to Ukraine in his helicopter six months ago because he opposed Russia’s war offensive. He sought safe haven in Spain, but that didn’t protect him from the long reach of Putin’s assassins. Maxim’s body was found on February 13th in the town of Villajoyosa near the coastal resort of Benidorm. He had been shot six times, then run over with his own car. Spanish intelligence officials called the killing a “settling of scores.” [AFP, Feb. 22, 2024.] Ya think?

Russian officials haven’t even tried to hide their involvement in this one. Stopping short of actually claiming responsibility, Sergei Naryshkin — head of Russia’s SVR (successor to the KGB) — remarked to Russian state news agencies: “This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime.” [AFP, Feb. 22, 2024.] As stated by Matthew Schmidt, Assistant Professor of National Security and Political Science, University of New Haven, “The message is loud and clear: We will find you anywhere in the world. We will kill you just to send a message to the next person thinking about it. That’s an extraordinary power, and Putin did it effectively, making sure it wound up in the news.” [Business Insider, Feb. 22, 2024.]

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And here’s one final note, from the “If you believe in coincidence” file: The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, occurred one day after the February 23rd anniversary of “Defender of the Fatherland Day” . . . originally called “Red Army Day.” Huge celebrations were held yesterday in Moscow and elsewhere, with Putin himself laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and boasting about Russia’s advanced nuclear weapons. He does irony rather well, doesn’t he?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/24/24