THE TRUTH ABOUT VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH PUTIN
I have finished my fourteenth book, The Truth About Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. In it, I start with his early life, his rise to power, and his current mindset. I muse about his sanity and present data that questions it. This man could start World War III and wipe out life as we know it! Many of his public statements are propaganda that are grotesque distortions of the truth. He is still fighting World War II, and his enemies are still the Nazis. My book explains why that is utter nonsense, but in one respect, his march into Ukraine is very reminiscent of Hitler’s march into Poland, and it may just lead us to the same place Hitler wanted to go. His idea that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people is also a spurious argument. Spain and Portugal have similar origins and languages, but that is hardly a justification for one country invading the other.
Nevertheless, he has convinced many that he is the virtuous one who is trying to set things right. My insight into Vladimir Vladimirovich is from growing up in a Ukrainian home with Ukrainian parents who had spent most of their life dealing with deranged autocratic dictators who had also committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine.
I chose the picture of Putin, which I photoshopped for my book cover, as a maniacal monkey grabbing a club with his left hind leg because that is how I see him. Putin miscalculated big time! In his delusional World, where he thought he could recreate the Imperial Russia of Peter the Great, he assumed that Ukraine would be crushed in days. He could just walk into Kyiv and arrest Vladimir Zelensky, likely put on a kangaroo show trial, then execute him and live happily ever after. That did not happen. Surprisingly, what was thought to be the most effective Intelligence Organization in the World, the former legendary K.G.B., now F.S.B. (Federal Security Service), could not figure out that Ukrainians do not like Russians and are not the same people, nor have they been for centuries, and furthermore Putin has a warped sense of history that does not correspond to what the scholars say.
My Father was born in Ukraine and considered himself Ukrainian, like millions of other Ukrainians did and still do. 92.3% of the Ukrainian population affirmed the desire for independence and separation from the Soviet Union in a referendum conducted in 1991 by the democratically elected unicameral Parliament. Ukrainian culture goes back hundreds of years. The Cossacks who formed the kernel of the culture were influenced by Lithuania, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire long before Russia even existed. Ukrainian was my Father’s first language which he spoke all his life, especially when he spoke to my mother so that he didn’t want me to understand until I, too, started laughing at off-color jokes he would tell her. I did not study in K.G.B. school as Putin did, but I have known since childhood that the two countries were, at best grudging neighbors. When someone visits you, a Ukrainian custom dating back to Kievan Rus is to give them bread and salt. The bread symbolizes wealth, and the salt is the purity of the soul. Putin envisioned people streaming out of their homes with bread and salt in hand, welcoming the Russian soldiers. Instead, they were met with bullets.
There were clear signs that Ukraine would resist a Russian occupation. Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians, along with my uncle, and imprisoned millions more in Siberia, including my Grandmother. He forbade the Ukrainian language to be spoken, taught in schools, or even written. Hundreds, and even more, who dared speak Ukrainian were killed or imprisoned and even committed suicide. It was not until the 1960s that Ukrainian could freely be spoken in Russia. That does not engender feelings of mutual fondness, and people do remember and pass on their memory to the next generation. Eight years ago, the Maidan Protests in Kyiv chased out the pro-Russian “puppet” President, Victor Yanukovych, to Russia. Shortly after that, Putin illegally annexed Crimea. That prompted 140,000 people to leave Crimea. Crimeans saw how their population was treated by the Russian thugs. They also saw that Putin created a Kleptocracy that stole from the Russian people. He could not have amassed $200,000,000,000, built eight palaces for himself, and bought six mega yachts on his K.G.B. salary. Bombing hospitals and schools are not considered civilized and constitute war crimes that in the past have qualified those war criminals for the death penalty. That gives you a clue of how untrustworthy and uncivilized the Putin regime is. It guarantees a festering wound between the Ukrainian and Russian people that may not heal for many decades, regardless of who wins.
My book explains why Ukraine has little choice. And why we must support them to avoid paying the same price we did to defeat that other dictator, Adolf Hitler, the spirit of whom Putin still claims to be fighting. Helping Ukraine is not charity (as some of our short-sighted Congress members claim). It is an investment in restoring the World order and securing our own safety from people that have no moral compass and no conscience. The book will be available on Amazon.com by April 1st.