A historical approach to history-obsessed Putin makes sense.
(Photo: IMAGO/Jochen Eckel)
Historical comparisons are lame, and mystifications of politicians usually don’t help either. But especially in the case of Vladimir Putin, who has an obsessive relationship with history, a historical approach makes perfect sense.
History can provide clues, especially when it comes to answering the question of whether Putin would give in to the Ukraine war and conduct peace negotiations in the near future. Of course, Putin is not the reincarnation of just one historical figure.
To put it provocatively, he is a Stalin who suffered from paranoia and massacred his people at will. And as far as his contempt for other nations is concerned, he definitely resembles a Hitler.
Putin’s anger against the Ukrainians is as boundless as Hitler’s hatred of the “Slavs,” whom he classified as subhuman. Like Hitler, who saw the “living space in the East” for the superior Aryan race, Putin claims Ukraine as a buffer against the West. He denies Ukraine’s right to “be a state”. Domestically, like Stalin, Putin has his environment cleaned up. He calls critics “scum and traitors”.
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Putin seems completely resistant to advice, some speak of a bunker mentality. Even Putin’s KGB instructors assisted him with a “lack of risk assessment and self-control.”
Putin has a bigger plan
This will mean that he will always seek escalation in the Ukraine war. His minimum goal is to replace Ukraine’s leadership with a puppet government loyal to Moscow.
Putin wipes away warnings that Ukraine can only be subjugated with the heaviest losses in the long term by referring to Syria and Chechnya: In the Levant he kept dictator Bashar al-Assad in power – against the rebels supported by rich Gulf states, American and Turkish associations.
The comparison between the Russian president and Stalin is obvious: Putin, like Stalin, has his environment cleaned up. He calls critics “scum and traitors”.
(Photo: Frank Hoppmann)
He subjugated the renegade Caucasus Republic after his troops had been wiped out with heavy losses. Here and there he broke the resistance with massive air strikes and an artillery inferno. The same is likely to happen in Ukraine.
And it won’t stop there. Because Putin is no longer only concerned with Ukraine.
Like his historical role models, he has a larger plan: He wants to split the EU, oust the US from Europe and become the largest power on the continent. What sounds megalomaniac, Putin has been preparing for years.
Ukraine war weakens the West
First, there is the Ukraine invasion. The sanctions imposed by the West not only weaken Russia, but also the EU states themselves.
Europe also has to cope with the millions of Ukrainian refugees first. At the same time, Putin is preparing a new and even larger wave of refugees: he eliminated Ukraine as a major agricultural exporter, including by sinking freighters carrying Ukrainian wheat in the Black Sea.
The EU is facing a major challenge: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are currently fleeing the war.
(Photo: IMAGO/epd)
The resulting famine will trigger another wave of refugees of unprecedented proportions to Europe, where Putin-backed nationalist and xenophobic parties are making waves.
All of this is just a scenario, but not an unrealistic one. The hope remains that Ukraine will become Putin’s Stalingrad, to use a historical parallel again.
More on this: Consumer sentiment in the euro zone collapses because of the Ukraine war