To western eyes – France, Great Britain, Germany, the United States……daily news out of Russia seems to describe occurrences of another time, perhaps the Middle Ages, when one evil man could issue an order and thousands would die. Today we see echoes of an even longer view of history, civilized and otherwise. But these things happen now, in real time. The fact that genocide – wiping out an entire people group – and political murder are again active in eastern Europe because of the Russo-Ukraine War does not allow an honest report of events there to be described as anything but one large atrocity. This is not, of course, new. Out of perhaps hundreds of brutal assassinations, a list of several of Vladimir Putin’s many victims includes influential persons in business, government and the press. A stark parallel was the hideous slaughter of black Union soldiers at the Civil War battle of Cold Harbor, General Ulysses Grant commanding. These men had risked all and served faithfully to liberate the American south, but because Grant had delegated a third assault on Confederate barricades to a cowardly and unreliable commander, mass carnage ensued. Unjust death, in battle or on the street, is often glossed over and forgotten, no matter in what country it is done. But blood cries out from earth.
Among Vladimir Putin’s known murdered victims are: Pavel Antonov, who mysteriously fell from a hotel window in India. Pavel Maganov, who died in like manner, head first out a hospital window. Dan Rapaport, found dead in the street in Washington, DC. Mikhail Lesin, former senior minister in the Russian government. Boris Nemtsov, once Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, shot in the back outside Kremlin walls. Boris Bereszosky, strangled at his home in Berkshire, England. Natalia Estemerova, a dissenting journalist, kidnapped and shot. Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, shot together near the Kremlin. Alexander Litveninko, former KGB agent, whose prolonged death from radioactive poisoning in London was particularly agonizing. Paul Klebnikov, the Russian editor of Forbes Magazine, shot. Insidious terror struck down all of those he could reach who disagreed – with Putin.
Today’s Russia is understood by intelligence offices in the U.S. to be a gangster country, ruled at the top by two primal passions: lust for power and fear – terror, actually – of being exposed, deposed and dispatched. Putin himself must live daily with these mental hurricanes. Assessed by common medical assent as having an aberrant schizo-affective mentality, he is able to order three more murders before breakfast, and to play his unravelling game of cat and mouse. He is proud of this, knowing that western nations realize who ordered the murders and will order more. Masking his reactions using techniques taught in all spy schools, Putin is not difficult to figure out: he is a legitimate monster. His mind is split between urgent desire for notoriety with the illusion of world power and his abject existential terror in knowing that soon it will all end, and he will be out of office or dead. To ease his deep anxiety, he routinely orders “pre-emptive strikes” by Federal Security personnel (formerly KGB) or by teams of hired goons who travel the world in an attempt to eliminate all opposition to his whims. Putin has few former friends anywhere. Most are dead. His driving passion is to kill as many more of his critics as he can, during the time he has left. He will endeavor to do so. But the tocsin has begun to chime.
Knowing that the Russian Army is a chimeric sham, and his only hope of victory lies in the fiction of his invincibility, Putin now telegraphs that he wants to negotiate so he can “end” a ghastly war he alone began. Don’t believe it. He wants us to save his fanny. He is so enmeshed in his war’s horrors that nothing but utter defeat will stop his madness. He will do ANYthing to avoid this – hence his sly overtures, designed to prey on our compassion in a macabre dance of threat, invitation and assault not seen since Hitler. We must defeat Putin; turning Russia back from his insane overtures for world dominance has to be priority one for the United States and all friendly countries which wish to remain free. Or our grandchildren will have to do so, and far greater carnage is in store
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
