Politics
Putin Makes the Russians Live in the Past and Futureless-ness at the Same Time.
Putin is a hostage of past ideas that have outlived their validity in most parts of the world. However, Russians are still buying them. Unless they stop buying what Putin promotes and move on to a new discourse, he won’t go out of business.
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Putin has been over and underestimated simultaneously by the world as well as Russians during the entire course of his political career. Though from time to time, he has managed to genuinely baffle world leaders by dint of deliberately-created jumbled diplomatic moves, he was and still remains largely predictable as his moves have always been repetitive. They are carefully calculated maneuvers with awareness of the cost of actions. He repeats them because they have worked for him, and the worst part is the world still often miscalculates his repetitious acts.
This affliction of his, through misinformation and deceit, on the world has been operative ever since he entered the political scene in Russia. He never moved into the new century with the rest of the world and still manages to control Russians through the same old virtual reality lens. I do not know whether Putin is too smart or Russians are too simpleton.
Becoming unanimously disastrous comes easy in a country like Russia, which operates on crookedness and depravity at the macro level achieved by spreading fake news and confusion. It is where citizens lack the courage to ask questions even when they are in doubt; that’s what makes Russia a tyranny — political as well as a tyranny of dangerous ideas.
Putin’s presumptions regarding Ukrainians and the war that the entire country would come crashing down have turned out to be wrong. In Putin’s mind, Ukrainians didn’t exist, he thought the west was backing just a small group of exclusive people, and they could be easily tackled and occupied.
Though the war displays a stark military mismatch, it changed its course many times and meandered through strikes and gutters for both Russia and Ukraine. During its course so far, it has revealed Russia’s weaknesses…
