'Inauguration': Putin's last political chord

But all dictators have a common trait: they also die because of their age, illness or physical elimination. Dictators rarely survive or retire in peace, and Putin is no different. In 2024, he will turn 71. If he had not started a war against Ukraine, he could easily have been president for several more decades.

However, having made a fatal mistake, he cannot be sure that he will be able to preserve his regime for at least a few more years.

He has become not a leader of the people, but a leader of usurped power. While Ukraine is heroically fighting for its statehood, Putin's Russia is fighting for its hyperbolic pride. It does not matter to the Kremlin leader how many more Russians die in this bloody and unjust war. His desire to dominate the world leads Russia to disaster, and his delusions of grandeur make it impossible to look at the situation with sober eyes. 

But, in addition to being a kleptocrat and a murderer, Putin is also an unrivaled liar whose assurances mean absolutely nothing. Just recall his famous phrases: "I'm not going to change the constitution"; "We treat Ukraine as a sovereign state"; "We have no plans for Crimea"; "There will be no war"; "This is not a war, it's a special operation"; “they are bombing ourselves"; "we are carrying out precision strikes"; "there will be no mobilization"...

And when he presents himself as a champion of "traditional values", in Putin's interpretation, they include arrests and beatings by the secret police, torture and murder of dissidents, unprovoked invasions of other countries, and the destruction of their populations by hundreds of thousands, and the genocide of Ukrainians.

In the 25 years he has been in power, he has become a tyrant who does not tolerate any objection, killing and maiming Russian oppositionists and arresting anyone who dares to call his so-called "special military operation" a war, sentencing them to 15 years in prison.

This usurper has become a huge threat to all freedom-loving, independent nations, not just Ukraine. And while many in Europe have begun to understand the danger of the situation, not everyone realizes that they must provide much greater assistance to the Ukrainian state if they do not want to become the next target of the Russian revanchist imperialists.

Putin's obsession with the destruction of the state of Ukraine and his desire to seize foreign lands, squandering his country's fixed wealth and strategic reserves to achieve this, will ultimately cost future generations of Russians their future.

Putin is a kleptocrat who has stolen more than $300 billion from the citizens of the Russian Federation. No other Russian leader, including even such monsters as Lenin and Stalin, has destroyed this country more than he has. And by holding "elections" in Russia from time to time, the dictator ensures that anyone who opposes him will eventually go to prison, be killed, or have help to die, as has already happened to many Russian opposition politicians.

However, even if the dictator manages to avoid a military coup by early summer, his further political fate and the continuation of his illegal rule will depend on many external factors. Putin cannot defeat Ukraine without the help of former US President Donald Trump. And Trump cannot defeat current US President Joe Biden without Putin's help.

These two political figures are so closely linked that Ukrainians need to monitor their every move very carefully. After all, Putin is ready to do anything to preserve his power, and Donald Trump is ready to return to power.

The Moscow "tsar" has turned the Russian Federation into a threat to the continued existence of all mankind. His intentions to restore the Soviet Union nearly 33 years after its collapse have become a model of imperial revanchism based on ultra-chauvinistic extremism and pseudo-Orthodox fundamentalism that has nothing to do with true faith.

And if we sum up the previous term of Putin's rule, it clearly cannot be comforting for him. Putin is facing the Hague Criminal Court, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has officially recognized him as illegitimate, the Russian Orthodox Church as an instrument of Russian influence and propaganda, and he has lost most of the troops and weapons The Russian terrorist army had until 24 February 2022 and has to beg Iran, North Korea and China for at least some weapons, as its old stocks, which have been in storage since Soviet times, have begun to run out, and the production of new ones is no longer keeping pace with the needs of the frontline. 

To this we must add that the economy of the Russian Federation is degraded, a huge part of the state budget is spent on the war, and a third of the population deprived of human rights lives in the 21st century without gas, sewage systems, and roads. 

And the poor, brainwashed by TV propaganda, are ready to join the killing of Ukrainians, the occupation of our lands, and become cannon fodder for money, regardless of the 470,000 Russian invaders already killed in Ukraine. 

However, the coffins that are being returned to Russia in ever-increasing numbers cannot yet interrupt the lies of the totalitarian dictator's total propaganda. And although the pseudo-patriotism embedded in this propaganda may provoke some of the male population of the Russian Federation to try to risk their lives for "easy money" in Ukraine, this money on the blood of Ukrainians turns into guaranteed death for these war criminals. And a society where families find themselves without male heirs in large numbers is doomed.

If the Russian national idea is self-destruction on Ukrainian territory, then they have chosen this path quite voluntarily. After all, new military equipment and weapons are arriving in Ukraine in the next few weeks, and this next aid package is far larger than anything Russia has ever seen before. And if Moscow continues to send its terrorist troops on the offensive, all Russian soldiers will die. Therefore, future widows should prepare for their fate now.

Since Putin became acting president of the Russian Federation on the last day of 1999, he has turned Russia into a totalitarian monolith by crushing the political opposition, expelling independent journalists from the country and silencing the majority of the population.

Seeking to go down in world history as the politician who managed to revive the former USSR, he provoked what will go down in history as the person who accelerated the disintegration of the totalitarian Russian Federation into dozens of independent republics, after which China would eventually get oil and gas-rich Siberia and the Far East.

After all, it was obvious in advance that, according to military mathematics, to capture and keep Ukraine under occupation, Putin would have to have more than 3 million occupation troops on Ukrainian territory. Ignoring this reality, the dictator attempted to implement the invasion on the cheap. At the beginning of the war, he sent just under 200,000 invaders.

At the same time, his brilliant "military plan" did not have a sufficient logistical base - fuel, provisions and water for his troops, who were stuck in a 70-kilometre convoy in February 2022 heading to Kyiv. Those who managed to get out of this failed campaign then had to make their way back to Russia on their own.

The only reason why Moscow believes that Russia can still win in Ukraine is the position of some Republicans in the US Congress from the pro-Trump MAGA group, such as Marjorie Taylor Green. The Russian-Ukrainian war would have had every chance of ending in 2024 if these Republican congressmen had not blocked the aid package for Ukraine for six months. 

But sooner or later, Putin will face a coup d'état. Because while he used to be able to act as an arbitrator to resolve differences and extinguish conflicts between members of the political establishment, the military, the security services and oligarchs, he is now in a much weaker position than he was before February 2022.

He has far fewer allies among Russian elites and far more opponents than he can imagine.A geopolitical gangster seeking to acquire "new territories" at any cost and preserve his regime will not be able to continue to use religion as a tool to consolidate his power. 

And he will not be saved by a total military economy. The number of dictators who have made the same mistake is staggering. A war economy succeeds only when you are defending your country, and it goes bankrupt when you start waging war on others.

The Russian Federation will collapse when the war in Ukraine ends. That is why the dictator and his criminal gang are doing everything to ensure that the Russian-Ukrainian war continues as long as possible.

Putin's "inauguration" is the last political chord of his stay at the top of the Russian power pyramid. Putin's regime has no chance of survival, but the democratic Western world must do everything it can to ensure that, sensing the fall of his power, Putin does not try to drag the whole world down with him.

Source

About the author. Viktor Kaspruk, journalist

The editors do not always share the views expressed by the authors of the blogs.