Putin geht nirgendwo hin. Der Westen muss sich in den Griff bekommen – Glauben Sie nicht, dass Social-Media-Memes und clevere Stunts Putin stürzen werden. Das kann nur eine Niederlage in der Ukraine bewirken
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-volodymy-zelenskyy-elections-eu-ukraine-russia-war/
Von Horus_walking
10 Comments
“Wishing something were true doesn’t make it so.
And yet, for the past two years, we’ve had a plethora of predictions suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s days are numbered, that Russians will turn on him or that he’ll be ousted in a Kremlin coup by oligarchs and Russia’s elite, now targeted by Western sanctions and angry over their frozen overseas assets.
Even Mikhail Kasyanov, Putin’s prime minister from 2000 to 2004, had confidently predicted that the president’s grip on power could slip abruptly: “In three or four months, I believe there will be a crucial change,” Kasyanov, now in exile, said back in 2022.
Another recurring narrative is that Putin’s afflicted with a fatal malady. “He has been sick for a long time; I am sure he has cancer. I think he will die very quickly. I hope very soon,” Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, announced at the start of last year.
And while former Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s bungled mutiny last summer sparked more hopeful predictions that, surely, it would be the start of Putin’s unraveling, it didn’t prove to be so.
Now, nine months on, Putin’s hold on power is tighter than it’s ever been, and he’s on course to become Russia’s longest-serving ruler since the czars, overtaking Joseph Stalin. And the imitation election that saw him secure 87 percent of the vote has only served to underline the glaring fact that he’s in full suffocating, repressive control of his country — despite the small flash mobs and defiant social media memes to the contrary.
The oligarchs know not to defy the boss. They have only to look at what happened to those who have — from Boris Berezovsky, who was found dead at his home in Berkshire, England to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who served a decade in Putin’s dungeons. And we all know Putin’s friendship with Prigozhin didn’t prevent the Wagner boss from being blown to smithereens on board his private jet either…
However violent or peaceful, Russia’s opposition seems an irrelevance, no matter how much it’s talked up by some commentators in the West, hoping to raise spirits. “Russia’s prodemocratic opposition was largely a spent force well before February 2022,” analysts from the Center for European Policy Analysis argued in their recent “Containing Russia, Securing Europe” report. And while many of these individuals now continue the fight from abroad and “play an important role in helping to get information in and out of Russia, supporting Ukrainian and Russian refugees, and advocating on behalf of political prisoners, as well as organizing largely futile acts of resistance on the ground, there is little sense that any of these efforts can bring about a change in the makeup or direction of the Russian regime,” they wrote.
So, what does all this mean for Ukraine and the West?
It means that Russia’s defeat in Ukraine is the only realistic goal. This would not only allow Ukraine the sovereign right to choose its own destiny, but it would also deter Putin from further aggression — and it might just save Russia too, being the one thing that could potentially shift the country’s political dynamics. But for such victory to be achieved, the West has to gird itself, accelerate weapons provision and military assistance, and help Ukraine weather the soon-to-come Russian offensives that will likely target Kharkiv and Odesa, as well as build up for another heave to try and push Russia out.
Wishful thinking that Putin’s days are numbered and that a meme will bring him tumbling down need to be pushed aside. It’s time to get deadly serious, Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told POLITICO. “Because time favors Russia, not Ukraine.” Because “on the Russian side, they’re adapting for a long war; they have rebuilt their country completely with war in mind. It’s an authoritarian country that’s completely under the control of the power vertical. The first priority is Russia must be defeated,” he said.”
Yes. Putin isn’t the cause of all this; the cause is Russia. Putin is merely what Russia sees in the mirror. When he is gone and replaced by someone else, it will still be Russia looking.
Actually the West needs to grow a pair of balls!
[The Ukrainians know what’s up as expressed a year ago](https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/2/17/for-many-ukrainians-everyday-russians-are-as-guilty-as-putin).
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>*Alona Shevchenko, who started Ukraine DAO, an organisation that says it tackles war-related disinformation and raises money for Ukraine’s military, told Al Jazeera that every Russian should feel a sense of responsibility for the “murders” committed under their nation’s flag.*
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>*“Words without actions don’t have any meaning,” she said by phone from London, where she migrated eight years ago as a student. “If you are against war, go and take Putin out then.*
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>*“If somebody is killing me on the street and you just stand by and you watch it … you are complicit.”*
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>*Criticism of Russian protests also often circulates on social media.*
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>*Some Ukrainians say there is not enough action, while others believe the anti-war movement that does organise is inadequate.*
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>*While the loud Russian anti-government rallies got quieter soon after the war began, there was a short spark again in September 2022, after Moscow ordered a partial mobilisation to replenish and bolster its forces.*
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>*But these demonstrations were denounced by Ukrainians who questioned the protesters’ motives – the rallies, they said, centred on their own fears, rather than concerns over the horrors in Ukraine.*
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>*Around the same time, large-scale protests were erupting across Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by the country’s morality police.*
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>***“While Iran people fighting for the future, Russians just observe and barely protest,”*** *tweeted Nikita Rybakov, a Kyiv-based designer.*
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>***“You actually have to fight,”*** *Shevchenko told Al Jazeera.* ***“In order to overthrow the government, they are going to have to use force.”***
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>*She pointed to Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity” at Kyiv’s Maidan square in 2014, when Ukrainians seeking closer ties with Europe fought to remove pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich.*
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>*Initially peaceful demonstrations turned into violent riots as Yanukovich ordered his army to fire on protesters, according to the Ukrainian authorities installed after he was ousted.*
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>*The citizens fought back with arms and Yanukovich was voted out of office and fled the country, fearing for his safety.*
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>***Melkozerova told Al Jazeera that the violence, although unfortunate, was a “necessary move because Ukrainians understood that guys like Yanukovich, like Putin, like [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko, would not go on their own from their posts”.***
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Too bad that too many “good” Russians and naive Westerners keep ignoring first-hand experience, and cling to false hopes for a “beautiful Russia” based on peaceful protest.
They just sabotage themselves before things even begin because the tactics of peaceful protest that work in a democracy are set up to *fail* in an autocracy. The events of 1989 in most of eastern Europe were arguably anomalous, and the Romanians had to do things the hard and bloody way anyway.
The events of 1989 seem subconsciously to give false hope to so many Westerners and “good” Russians. The thinking is that since the East Germans, Poles, Czechs et al. could dismantle over 40 years of the Kremlin’s enslavement by peaceful means, then *surely* ordinary Russians can equally dismantle over **400 years** of the same Kremlin’s enslavement autocracy by similarly peaceful means.
There’s a reason ordinary Russians have languished for so many ~~years~~ *centuries* in an autocracy, and it’s **not** the fault of the Collective West™ or whatever other external boogeyman they conjure up.
For all of the faults of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, they knew that no one could change Russian society with limp-dісk measures, virtue-signaling and peaceful protest. One needs to break enough skulls. Trying to sneak in some Bolsheviks or other leftists into the Duma wouldn’t have done a thing to get rid of the Romanovs. Ironically, it’s something that Ukrainians today and Lenin (if he were still alive) would very probably agree on.
The same applies for ~~Putin~~ Vladimir III as it did for Nicholas II. Too many “good” Russians and Westerners can’t admit that it’s the Russians’ *own damned fault* that they’ve normalized the necessity of such extreme measures to effect any meaningful change in society and government.
Speaking of social media, we should also not run around believing that propaganda only works on Russians. It’s critical to get a hold of the information space and to do it yesterday.
As long as he stays away from Nato territory he can stay where he is. Domestic policy of third countries isnt exactly our business.
A defeat in Ukraine will do jack shit when Russian media successfully spins it as evil NATO conspiring against Putin.
Dictators aren’t voted out. That’s why they are dictators.
Even that won’t stop him, he’ll still stay dictator for life, if peaceful and no so peaceful Preggo marches didn’t stop him, nothing will stop him short of death, however the foreign policy defeat will protect UA and the rest of the allies so EU should get prepared.
Actually it only took memes and social media to topple the US elite and plant a Russian puppet
the best way to stop him is waiting for some pre-planned public appearance and then sending in the drones at his face