2 Comments

Great article. It certainly expresses thoughts identical to ones I had over the past days since the invasion, but some of the points it made merit a bit of clarification and elaboration.

It treats Putinism as if it's a coherent and well defined ideology, but I think it would be a mistake to view Putin as some ideological inspiration or even fellow-traveler to the populists in the West. To Putin, I think they were mostly "useful idiots" who regarded him as a some kind of figurehead and always projected into him their own biases and prejudices, which he seldom held himself.

While it's still early to tell how things will turn out for Ukraine, one silver lining that already happened as a result of Putin's action is the overnight obliteration of the empire of lies and bullshit that his regime worked so diligently to construct across the world and in the West particularly, over the past 15 years or so. It was an empire of lies that relied on an image as a cool, smart and reasonable leader who makes reasonable demands against a hysterical West, which he spent countless resources cultivating among certain segments of the populace. This was the main source of his "soft power" in the West and it all went up in smoke overnight.

It's also good that the article mentioned Viktor Orban throwing Putin under the bus, because there's actually a pretty amusing anecdote on this subject that I think is worth sharing.

Recently I heard a talk between two Russian pundits who speculated whether Orban, being such a good friend of Putin and all, will intervene alongside Putin in Ukraine from the West and try to annex Zakarpattia to supposedly "protect" Hungarians living in that part of Ukraine against "fascists". But instead of Orban coming to Zakarpattia, Zakarpattia ended up coming to him in the form of over 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. The in question video was posted on the day of invasion, but was probably filmed a bit earlier.

Expand full comment

I will do my best to spread the label "The Moscow Butcher"...it is essential that every reference to Putin be accompanied by this type of descriptor. I do agree that Russia will become a pariah on the world stage, particularly if Iran becomes a de facto oil provider, and the US and EU finally become serious about drastically and quickly reducing dependence on oil and gas. That said, I do wonder to what extent the truth of this ghastly genocide is permeating to the average Russian citizen, with the massive state gaslighting and censorship of the free press. What can citizens of Western countries do to hasten the end of this nightmarish war? More weapons to Ukraine? More attack jets? Sanctions on oil and gas companies vs the current carve-outs? Are there resistance networks that can bypass Russian censorship to provide truthful information to the Russian people? There must be something other than helplessly witnessing genocide.

Expand full comment