There was a time when Vladimir Putin seemed to see himself, not as the head of a re-created Soviet state, but as a czar — an omnipotent monarch ruling over a quiet, subservient, grateful populace. “The monarch doesn’t have to worry about whether or not he will be elected, or about petty political interests, or about how to influence the electorate,” Putin said in “First Person,” a biography published in 2000. “He can think about the destiny of people and not have to be distracted by trivialities.”
When the biographer asked him whether the return of monarchy in Russia was possible, Putin answered: “You know, there’s a lot that seems impossible and incredible, and then — bang!”
Putin may liken himself to a czar, but the rest of the world now knows his true nature is even worse. Actually, the world has suspected Putin’s essence for a long time, but his brutal, bloody invasion of Ukraine has confirmed it. Putin is a despot, a brutish thug in the same ignominious pantheon as Bashar Assad, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet and Josef Stalin, the genocidal Soviet dictator whose image Putin has tried to rehabilitate in the eyes of Russians.
It’s time that the rest of the world treats him the way it treats despots. With condemnation, isolation and no quarter.
As of this writing, Russian troops have moved into Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Desperate Ukrainians are either fleeing or readying Molotov cocktails and small arms to defend their homeland. Putin’s illegal invasion is proceeding as planned, and while Russian soldiers have encountered stiffer-than-expected resistance, Ukraine’s military forces cannot match Russia’s troop strength and air superiority. Whatever happens, though, Putin is likely to inherit a fierce insurgency that could endure for years.
President Joe Biden has been careful to mete out sanctions against Putin and Russia so that every cudgel in the West’s arsenal isn’t prematurely expended. On Thursday, Biden followed up on an earlier set of modest sanctions with more robust punishment, including imposing harsh penalties on Russia’s two largest banks and shutting down the import of American technology such as semiconductors, lasers and telecommunications equipment, which are vital to Russia’s aerospace, defense and shipping industries. Sanctions against one of the banks, Sberbank, will shut it out of American commerce and bar it from transacting in U.S. dollars. The other bank, VTB, will have all of its assets in American financial institutions frozen.
While those penalties carry heft, the utility of meting out sanctions against Russia may be reaching its end. Sanctions against the bulwark of the Russian economy, the country’s energy sector, should be on the table. So should penalties against Putin himself. No one has yet to unearth where the Russian leader has stashed his billions, but tracking down his ill-gotten troves should be a top priority for the West.
The value of sanctions lies not just in potentially deterring Putin from further aggression in Ukraine. Sanctions also must be harsh enough to inflict lasting damage to Putin, his circle of corrupt billionaires and the Russian economy so that the Kremlin becomes vulnerable to blowback from the Russian masses.
Regime change may one day stare Putin in the face. He wants it in Ukraine, but he may eventually get it at home.
So far, Putin’s self-serving decision to plunge his country into war with Ukraine hasn’t dented his approval ratings among Russians, but that may not last. If sanctions upend the lives of Russians, if the economy slows to a point that the gross domestic product plummets and joblessness soars, Putin may find himself coping with demonstrations too large and angry for his riot squads to quash. It may take time for sanctions to lay such a foundation, but the West must consider the long game in this crisis, alongside the immediacy of Ukraine’s plight.
It’s true that Russians get a skewed view of what happens outside and inside of Russia, via media long ago commandeered by Putin. But Russians know all too well the inhuman indifference Putin is capable of showing to his own people.
When Chechen militants took over a packed theater in Moscow in fall 2002, Putin’s commandos pumped into the building a toxic gas, believed to be a fentanyl derivative, that killed not just the 40 hostage takers, but also 130 hostages. Putin knew children and elderly people were inside — he simply didn’t care. He was just as indifferent about innocents when his forces used tanks, flame throwers and grenade launchers to put down the 2004 Chechen militant takeover of a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan. As many as 334 innocent people died in the siege, 186 of them children. No matter the time or setting, Putin sees human lives the same way he sees pawns on a chessboard — expendable.
Biden’s right when he says Putin chose this war. Putin also chose the role of despot. He has brought the consequence of being a pariah on himself. Now it’s up to the world to ensure that becomes cemented as Putin’s fate. The longtime spy who lavished himself with coronation-like inaugurations may one day find himself a global outcast, and if there’s any justice in the world, throne-less.
©2022 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Vlad Putin has acted like a hungry dog, but due to his own actions now finds himself a cornered dog, boxed in by his own greed and over reaching. Biden, or those who control him, need to understand that if you try to take a bone away from a cornered dog, he will bite you. But put down a piece of prime rib and he will drop the bone and go for the rib, that is if he is a hungry dog, not a mad dog. Current History is about to tell us which. What really is it about Putin and the Ukraine that would cause him to drop his invasion and go for another less lethal piece of meat? ,,his ego, his pathological need for a historical legacy, and his greed for power or money. Russia is 17,075,200 sq km, or about 11.46% of world’s land, and borders 18 nations. Its Asian part is the largest country in Asia, Its European the largest country in Europe. How much land will satisfy Putin’s greed to control humanity? If Biden thinks finite little Ukraine will be the end to his infinite greed and pathological need for power then the sun will arise tomorrow in the west. Trust, but always verify. Discrimination in war is a great thing when separating the sane good who enlarge you and your people, vs the evil who only enlarge themselves and destroy the nation you love. Putin has proven worse than a Czar, he is a pathological Communist Stalinist killer of his own people. His crimes against humanity now exposed are so great he has no place to run to for sanctuary but Armageddon.
HE needs to be treated like a RABID wild dog..
There was a time when rulers could get away with these schenanigans but the eyes of the media are everywhere these days and people outside can see what’s happeneing without waiting for ‘news at eleven’, they see it in real time. And that include the Russian people, many of whom have friends and relatives caught in the middle of his WAR, not some far-off little known area no one has heard of. We must remember that we are dealing with a former KGB inforcer, a thug who misses the glory days of oppression and subjugation!
The Russian Peacenick People will soon be singing ” Where have all the flowers gone?”,,,,,,,the flower of the Soviet Army?
Russian saboteurs are marking patriot buildings and even schools for bombing and attack, setting off at least seven car bombs on the Kyiv streets, like powerless Muslim Terrorist in Iraq. The “Z” you’ve seen marked on the tanks and rocket launchers do not stand for Zelenskyy, but are Russian. My sister-in-law and family in Kiev have been hunkered down in the bomb shelter of their son’s building for 4 days with women and children. A strange woman was asked if she lived in the building, then suddenly bolted out the door to an awaiting car to escape, faster than an America found-out Biden-Bernie-Hillary socialist 5th columnist discovered within the ranks of an American FBI or American media,, or a Chinese implanted “Get out of Dodge quick back to China” Fang Fang, caught in Bed with Eric Swalwell who to this day sits on the Congressional committee of Homeland Security, reappointed by Pelosi. Thank God the Ukrainian high-tech guys and infrastructure protectors are smarter than the Russian’s, which tends to happen to free men and women who alwys prevail over the socially indoctrinated and oppressed, The Kiev phones and internet work periodically but are still basically intact. Ukrainian Small-tech even toy play spy drones are being used by citizen soldiers for sweeping the Kyiv streets for incoming Russians to be targeted by patriotic Ukrainians.
Good to see the global community come together, to punish him.. Such as FIFA’s recent call to BAN ALL russian teams from playing internationally.. PITY IT CAME after the invasion had already been going on for almost a week, and NOT BEFORE hand, to stop it in the first place.
If Biden is too timid to declare a Ukranian no-fly zone, how about a humanitarian airlift corridor like we forced on the Russians to Berlin?
August 1, 1944 as the Russians approached Warsaw, the non- communist Polish Army of Resistance fighters initiated the Warsaw uprising to liberate the city from German occupation. They expected the approaching Russians to assist them against the common German enemy who was retreating from Poland. Stalin ordered his forces to stand down while the Germans slaughtered the freedom fighters of resistance, deporting civilians to concentration death and forced labor camps reducing Warsaw to ruins. Joe Biden and the NATO armed forces now have the opportunity to assist the Ukrainian freedom fighters or act like Stalin and stand down to let the forces of evil prevail. It is Putin who accuses the Ukrainians of acting like Nazi Thugs but attacks the population of Kyiv like the Germans did at Stalingrad, and it is Biden who acts more like Stalin did at Warsaw sitting on his hands as Putin does his worst to the Ukrainian people. Putin’s nuclear forces stand up on High-Alert, and Biden just heads home to Delaware for a funeral and a nap. His traitorous self-chosen inactive shame to himself and the USA will go down in infamy, while bad Putin prevails because Good Americans were forced by incompetent retreating Biden to defer and do nothing. Biden expects us to wait a month to see if the sanctions work, as Stalinist Putin will wait 3 more years to see how much more Biden can work for HIM. The State of this Union is a Putin blacked out city on a hill under attack.
That is why i keep laughing, every time i see some new report on fox, about this or that ukranian official asking biden to do something.. IMO ALL those pleas are just falling on deaf ears.
United States and Western Europe sucking on oil from Russia, enriching a communist dictator and enriching Putin’s military! “Stupid is as stupid does”, besides these politicians (in the U.S. and the West) being traitors to their own people, right Joe Biden?
Let Biden dare to issue a Presidential proclamation that ANYONE caught aiding and abbeting the Putin Russian cause in Ukraine be immediately arrested for treason.,,,,But he can’t because he and Hunter and their get rich quick Russian/Ukrainian oil schemes would put them first on the list. Every Dollar the USA uses to buy Russian oil puts lead in the hearts of the Ukrainian freedom movement and their citizen patriots as well.
IMO that’s WHY he killed our oil pipelines. TO MAKE US dependent ON russia, so we couldn’t really do much, lest we risk our nation getting cut off.
Yet we now see a 17 mile of Russian trucks and tanks backed up in a17 mile gas shortage on their way to Kiev. What is left of the Ukraiioan’s air force needs to turn them into the Saddam Husein highway of death. Have you received your friendly neighborhood supply of napalm today? Shake and Bake them.
I’d love to see a few dozen A-10 warthogs CHEW THEM UP.. and spit them out.
I get the feeling the press created this war. They ignore the history and promote the American installed socalist-democrat leadership in Ukraine. Remember 2014 when the Russian backed collation in Ukraine was elected and moved to stay out of the EU and realign with Russia. They saw that Americans like the Bidens Pelosi’s Clintons, Kerry’s and Romneys were being used to harm the average citizen and enrich the wealthy billionaires freedom brought Ukraine. Obama sent in the CIA, stirred up the students caused a mini civil war and ousted the elected leadership. Of course this was most likely done to feather the Biden’s nest and sure enough there was Hunter trading Dad’s promises as VP for millions of Ukranian dollars. Ukraine became the playground for the American filthy rich and their political operatives. In doing so it put an enemy on Russia’s doorstep. Much like a communist Canada is a risk to the USA. Russians in Ukraine have been treated as Canadian Truckers, since 2014. They have a right to be angry. Maybe that doesn’t justify invasion, Trump knew that when he met with Putin. He ran on it, if you remember. Had the clintons, dnc, major media, socials and the EU not lied about Russian Collusion, and allowed Trump to handle it. This never would have happened. Remember Ukraine =social democrat AOC style, Russia is Trumpian capitalist. Beware you back the right side. Not the left one.
I vividly remember the 2014 Ukrainian revolution where tens of thousands filled the streets of Kiev while Russian operatives with rifles sat up on the rooftops sniping the Patriot leaders in death, while Obama looked the other way for a Crimea cry me a river payoff. The Russian “Chocolate King:” coalition backed stooge was run out of the country and replaced with a popular comedian who ran for office, not appointed by a Russian Czar.
I never saw a Zelenskyy comedy skit, but he must have been one great comedian, because he sure is making a Joke out of Putin. His “Standup” comedy is now making Putin laugh all the way back to the mental asylum ,,,,of his troops now wearing Zelenskyy issued Russian troop movement Straight-jackets
It was TRUMP who looked Putin in the eye and unlike Establishment Bush who found him Straightforward and Trustworthy, saw the devil in disguise. He told Putin that if he attacked Ukraine Moscow would be vaporized. It was Putin who began tooting and then backed down.