My grandmother used to say that. Of course, she was thinking in terms of the narrow confines of our town in 1940s Rhode Island . . . and usually about the kurva (use your imagination) who lived just down the street and had to pass our house on her way to church.

I, on the other hand, am referring to someone much more widely known . . . someone who holds complete power in his own country, and seems to have a terrifying influence over the current occupant of the White House. This guy:

So, while this missive should be addressed to the man in the Oval Office as a caution to beware of his Russian counterpart, I know he’ll never read it; and even if he did, it wouldn’t register, because it’s not what he wants to hear.

But some of the details, since they are intentionally not widely publicized by the Kremlin, might be of interest to the casual reader. So here are a few tidbits to add to what you already know.

*. *. *

There’s nothing secretive about what Vladimir Putin is: what he has done, and continues to do, in Ukraine; about the journalists and dissidents he has arrested and imprisoned in recent years; or about the deaths of the more well-known of his victims, including Alexei Navalny and Yevgeny Prigozhin. But did you know about . . .

The Early Years. Originally a young hoodlum from St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Putin grew up to become a Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB. He was stationed in East Germany when, in 1991, the Soviet Union was suddenly declared kaput. Returning to his home town, he aligned himself with the then mayor of the city, Anatoly Sobchak, a popular liberal of the day. Putin became Sobchak’s fixer, his procurer of goods, services, and information . . . a latter-day Fagin, if you will.

When Yeltsin, then President of Russia, realized that Sobchak was somehow able to acquire things that were still scarce in Moscow and elsewhere, he asked Sobchak why. Learning that it was due to a wily fellow named Putin, Yeltsin snatched Putin away from St. Petersburg and brought him to Moscow. And the rest . . . well, you know . . . history.

Incidentally, Sobchak died in February of 2000 at the age of just 62 years . . . officially of a heart attack, though the opinions of two medical experts were contradictory.

*. *. *

Galina Starovoitova. A former Soviet dissident, she carried on her campaign against corruption in the Russian government and society after the breakup of the Soviet Union by becoming a member of Parliament. She lobbied for legislation to keep former secret intelligence (i.e., KGB) agents out of politics, which would have prevented Vladimir Putin — then an up-and-coming member of the Yeltsin administration — from eventually becoming president. It was, of course, Boris Yeltsin himself who had brought Putin to Moscow from St. Petersburg, and who — on the recommendation of oligarch (now deceased) Boris Berezovsky — had since appointed Putin head of the FSB, a successor agency to the KGB.

But Starovoitova’s campaign failed . . . and so did her heart, when she was shot to death in the hallway of her St. Petersburg apartment building in 1998.

The following year, at the end of 1999, Putin — by then having been elevated to the position of Prime Minister of Russia — was handed the interim presidency when Yeltsin resigned. He then stood for election in March of 2000 and won handily . . . as he has done in every election since then by simply amending the Russian Constitution to extend the term limitations provision as needed.

Had Starovoitova’s legislation been passed, that would not have been possible. Her death was a political necessity.

*. *. *

Moscow Apartment Bombings and Theater Hostage Crisis. In 1999, as Vladimir Putin was preparing to run for the presidency, a series of bombings — the largest being in Moscow — took place in three locations in Russia, killing some 300 people and injuring an estimated 1,000 others. The incidents were immediately labeled as terrorist acts, blamed on Chechen rebels, and were all the impetus needed by Putin to stage his second war on Chechnya. He stepped forward to declare his “war on terrorism,” at the moment when the people of Russia were frightened and needed a strong leader. Coincidence . . . right?

In 2002, more than 900 audience members were taken hostage in the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow . . . this time by actual Chechen rebels in retribution for Putin’s barbaric invasion of their region. In order to free the hostages without giving the terrorists the opportunity to activate the explosives they were carrying, the FSB (successor to the KGB) security troops filled the theater with an anesthetic gas 1,000 times more potent than ricin. When the anesthetized hostages were removed from the theater to be revived, between 130 and 174 of them were dead . . . along with every one of the Chechen rebels.

Dead men don’t talk. In order to silence the hostage-takers, all 900 of the hostages’ lives had been placed in danger . . . at the direct orders of Vladimir Putin. Of the six people who attempted to investigate the incident, three died in strange circumstances. One was Anna Politkovskaya. A fearlessly outspoken journalist who dared to oppose the Putin regime, she continued to report on the horrific situation in Chechnya. She too was shot to death . . . ironically, on Vladimir Putin’s birthday in 2006.

*. *. *

And the list goes on and on: Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny, Aleksandr Litvinenko, Boris Berezovsky . . . all dead, as well as the attempted murders of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the exile of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and countless others. All on the orders of the man in the Kremlin.

The man whom Donald Trump has chosen to rehabilitate at the expense of America’s European allies.

The same Donald Trump who once bragged:

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/23/25