Dictatorship's crooked mirror

I have read two morning news that are almost next to each other in the news feeds. The first one is that "Putin completed the illegal annexation of 4 regions of Ukraine." The second one is an analysis from which it follows that Ukraine's Armed Forces are achieving significant success in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

Here is the mainstream of the last days, which clearly shows that Russia (and several of its allies who silently or loudly support its sure path to the abyss) live in a world of crooked mirrors, constructing their reality, radically different from the one that can be felt almost tactilely.

Dictators always create their own world (shrunken, petty, and disgusting) in order to justify at least the need for themselves personally or the pretended rationality of their actions. At first they succeed, often even very successfully. De Gaulle spoke about it like this: "At first, everything appears in a bright light. The enthusiasm of some and the silence of others, rigid, imposed order, brilliant scenery, and purposeful propaganda add to the dictatorship at the first stage a dynamism that clearly wins, compared to the past time of anarchy."

Let's recall the first years of Putin's rule.  Russia is changing, "rising from its knees", pushed by high energy prices. It is not a problem that yesterday's lieutenant colonel of the KGB is "confused under his feet" by the opposition - those who declare their disagreement too loudly can be shot in the entrance, and those who understand the logical end - sent abroad.

Propaganda chokes on its own omnipotence and construction of reality about "great Russia", and the West seeks a "reset" in relations with an apparently "democratic" regime, which, however, even then stammers about the "sovereignty" of its democracy.

"Sovereignty" consisted, first of all, in the creeping capture of the country by the FSB feudal lords, the pacification of unruly regions, the corruption of political elites (not only political parties, which still somehow worked in Yeltsin's field, pretending to be the liberal opposition). The "third way" of Russia, according to Vladimir Baburin, a columnist for the Russian service of Radio Svoboda at the time, should be "looked for somewhere in the center of Moscow. Between Sakharov and Andropov avenues. And there are such traffic jams…"

It seems to me that the "sovereign Russian democracy" is still stuck in those traffic jams. At most, it degraded to the level of a disgusting, aggressive tyranny, with a special view of both itself and the world. Tyranny, wrapped in quasi-imperial robes, equipped with the most shameful examples of its own past, a sub-empire with the illusion of omnipotence and feudal right - both over the lives of its own citizens and over the fate of the world.

The crooked mirror of Putin's reality should have shattered long ago after the invasion of Ukraine, the collapse of the "blitzkrieg" idea, and the total defeat of the "2nd army" near Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson. After all, the latest reflexive movements of propaganda testify that those who should collect the fragments of the self-made worldview are weak and helpless. Under the Ukrainian Armed Forces' blows,  sanctions restrictions of the Western countries, when the monolith of the regime has already begun to crack, all these "Skabeevs", "Solovyovs", and others cannot cope with reality. The "last hero" of this war is very eloquent for the Russians - a terrorist with the call sign "Ludoed", a former director of the cemetery, who easily tells that seven people from his platoon remained alive.

And Putin's last argument was nuclear blackmail. To complete the picture with the pre-articulated "atomic ashes" and a separate "paradise for the Russians", he is ready to take the whole planet to that "paradise".

But it won't be like that. There will be another "Bottom" station for the odious "nuclear train" that allegedly moved towards Ukraine. And a modern version of the basement of the Ipatiev House, in which retribution will await the bunker man. 

About the author. Ihor Hulyk is a journalist, Editor-in-Chief of the Espreso.West website. 

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