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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
One of the most amusing comments international observers can make is on the order of wondering what Russian President Vladimir Putin is thinking. He is one of the most transparent leaders in the world today. He is former KGB. He misses the old Soviet empire. He wants it back. He resents the West for helping create its dissolution. He fails to understand that a socialist system is always going to fail, no matter how many people are murdered or imprisoned who get in the way.
President Vladimir Putin does, however, know his Russian history. He knows the following:
- – In September, 1739, the Russo-Turk War ended with Russia ceding claims to Crimea, Moldavia, and the Russian navy being barred from the Black Sea.
- – In September 1829, the Russo-Turk War ended with Russia gaining the eastern Black Sea and the mouth of the Danube River.
- – In September 1905, Russia signed a treaty in the Russo-Japanese War after the destruction of the Russian navy at Tsushima.
- – In September 1915, Tsar Nicholas II assumed command of the Russian Army contributing to Russia’s defeat in World War I.
- – In September 1917, the minority party Bolsheviks gained control of the Duma leading to the October Revolution.
- – In September 1918, the Red Terror began: the campaign of political executions by Bolshevik Cheka secret police.
- – In September 1939, the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland. Tens of thousands of Polish were killed or disappeared.
(Hat tip to a former NSA Russian speaking cousin for the helpful history.)
For decades after 1939, the Soviets blamed the Polish losses on the Germans. My college history professor Dr. Betty Unterberger, in the 1970’s did research claiming the Soviets killed many Polish and took thousands of prisoners to work camps inside the Soviet Union, for which report she was banned from ever reentering the U.S.S.R. I wondered about that issue as I traveled in the Soviet Union as an exchange student in the 1970’s. It was not until after the fall of the Soviet Union that we learned that Dr. Unterberger had been exactly right.
Between May of 1988 and February 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew completely from Afghanistan after a very costly war that appeared to have no end in sight. The Soviets were sick of the war and their casualties, with nearly 15,000 Soviets killed and approximately 35,000 wounded during approximately ten years of war.
Also during the late 1980’s, the Soviet effort to keep up with the Reagan plan for a missile defense added to their extensive economic problems. By the time President George H.W. Bush took office in January 1989, the U.S.S.R. was in such vast trouble, its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, was trying to make economic reforms to save it — which ultimately was not possible. There were hardliners who believed that if he had stayed the course and not attempted to democratize the system, it would have stood. That led to an unsuccessful attempted coup of Gorbachev in August of 1991.
By September 1993, a resistance leader, Boris Yeltsin, had enough support to seize control of the House of Soviets in Moscow. Unfortunately, Yeltsin did not foster political freedoms so that when a replacement was necessary, Putin, who had shown ruthless devotion to Yeltsin, was pushed into being Prime Minister by the oligarchs in August 1999. There should have been an election in 2000 for President, but Yeltsin stepped down early, making Putin president, and also creating early elections for which only Putin was prepared.
No matter what Putin’s title has been, since 2000, he has been in charge. He has used whatever means were available to strengthen his power, eliminate enemies, and broaden Russia’s territorial controls.
As a member of Congress, I met Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and saw the physical damage resulting from the poisoning that no doubt came from Russian agents in Ukraine as Yushchenko tried to steer Ukraine into closer relations with Europe and the U.S. Having also visited with Ukrainian First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko in the President’s House in Kiev, she had a great deal more to say about the Russians’ efforts against her husband. Had she not gotten him to a hospital outside of Ukraine, he most likely would have died. Both she and her husband are quite brilliant and were seeking great days for Ukraine. Putin was determined to prevent that and still is.
Also as a Congressman, I had a lengthy private meeting in Kiev with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko who spent decades being pursued for bogus criminal allegations and evening being imprisoned where she suffered horrific abuse, all at the hands of corrupt Ukrainian leaders who apparently got their directions from Russia. Her main offense was leading unwaveringly in the fight for Ukraine’s independence from Russia and against corruption within Ukraine. Russian leaders and corrupt Ukrainian officials saw her as the civic-minded threat she was and is.
In recent days, many foreign policy pundits have publicly recalled that Putin first moved into Crimea and eastern Ukraine during the Obama/Biden administration beginning in February 2014. What I do not hear them pointing out is the green light that the administration gave them for such a move.
Putin had invaded Georgia while George W. Bush was president. He and his administration were outraged, used sanctions against the areas Russia tried to annex, used our military to assist the Georgians in peacekeeping actions, and made clear that this had a terribly chilling effect on US-Russia relations. Personally, I felt they could have done more, but they at least did something.
When Obama became president, however, he sent new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over to Russia with a goofy reset button. They wanted Putin to understand that they would not be dramatically overexcited in responding to Putin’s actions like the Bush administration. Intended or not, the message Putin received loudly and clearly was that if Russia invaded a country during their administration, they would not hysterically overreact the way the Bush administration did. They wanted to reset relations and have a great relationship going forward despite the evils the Russian leader had inflicted on other nations. It was all laughs and merrymaking.
If you were Putin, would you not take that to be a green light to move into Crimea? That is exactly the way Putin took it. He moved into Crimea and areas of eastern Ukraine during Obama’s administration.
During President Trump’s first term, Putin made no additional moves. He knew that for all of Trump’s friendliness, that the new U.S. president would not put up with the actions that Obama had and Biden would. So, he waited.
In January 2022, President Biden said, basically, that he expected Russia to invade Ukraine, but if it were a “minor incursion” it might not require significant action. Though the Biden-Harris administration later tried to walk back Biden’s statement, it was already public and it was coupled with the attitude from the Obama-Biden administration. Vladimir Putin took Biden at his first word. As my late mother used to say, “What is down in the well is going to come up in the bucket.” What Biden truly thought, came out of his mouth the first time.
By September 2022, Putin illegally annexed Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzia and Kherson Oblasts in Ukraine.
It appears the former KGB leader Putin is well aware that he has so much at stake in Ukraine. In June this year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington estimated Russian military troop deaths at 250,000 since February of 2022. As a reminder, the U.S. lost just over 58,000 precious American military lives in Vietnam over a nearly 20 year period.
Putin will keep pushing to keep all of the Ukrainian territory he possibly can. He cannot afford to be seen as losing in Russian eyes. Historically, those who ruthlessly gain and hold power normally have great fear that others are waiting to do the same to him if given the excuse and opportunity. People who have visited Russia in the past year tell me that Russians on the street are quietly desperate for the war to end. Despite his bluster and his ongoing attacks, Putin has to be getting a bit more desperate.
The question is, how many more thousands of Russian body bags will Russians accept before they have had enough, and Putin’s powerful Russian enemies have their excuse to move against him?
All of these things make Vladimir Putin potentially the world’s most dangerous man. And America has just the answer occupying the Oval Office right now, as Putin well knows.
Dumb article. If we hadn’t overthrown the democratically elected government Ukraine in 2014 none of this would ever have happened. He doesn’t want the Soviet Union back and has criticized the Soviet system publicly on many occasions. Is it too much for him to ask NATO to not put missiles right on his border pointing at Moscow? Our real enemies are right here in the U.S., and there are more commies in America in positions of influence than there are in Russia.
Exactly. If he is a dangerous Soviet then why does the Pentagon refer to Putin and his government as ‘far right’?
He can’t be both.
Thank You Gordon 💎🗝️💎 jap, text is under line to make coment x Russia is
country of “people” who are suffering to long, Hitler and Napoleon lost wars…
wast country….but, their soul is shining through Sibiria, poetry and art… only fire
makes diamond, mils swamp creates frogs !
Peace ☮️
And because he hasn’t sold Russia out to the homosexual agenda.
Russia has one of the highest rates of abortion in the world.. it is not the religious country Putin claims. The Russian Orthodox Church is state controlled by ex-KGB Patriarch Kirill. Watch Www.AFaithUnderSiege.com and learn about the hypocrite evil Putin and his war on Christianity.
The commonly cited super high Russian abortion rates are from the 1990s — when Russians were deeply immersed in poverty under the rule of the Seven Bankers. The guy who ended the rule of the Seven was… er… Vladimir Putin. Now the rates are much lower — 450,000 abortions in 2020. Russia doesn’t even make the top ten now. Number one is Vietnam. Number two is Madagascar.
The same goes for other commonly cited markers of Russian irreligion. They’re all from the 1990s — well before Putin came into power.
I don’t know if you’re doing poor research or fudging your findings. But you should stop using falsehoods to further your Russophobia.
thank you it gets to the point where I think I am the only sane person left in this country of know nothings who appear to be organically incapable of doing any research before forming opinions on things they know nothing about.
He is hated because he rapes, kills, steals children and wants to take over Eastern Europe. There is something evil about these Putin supporters. Globalist has nothing to do with the price of tea in China.
Nope , but you are a real moron
This article is utterly hopeless. The Congressman who wrote it knows nothing about Russia. The list of history items he cites is a cherrypicking of items irrelevant to the present.
I TEACH the history of the East Slavic lands, from earliest times right up to the present, and including the shameful events in Ukraine since 2005 engineered by the US neocons and military-industrial complex, their provocative and hostile expansion of NATO, and the warmonger Victoria Nuland.
Putin presides in great popularity over a Russia that has re-embraced traditional, pro-family, pro-life and anti-woke values, and the resurgence of Christianity. He opposes globalism and defends the interests of his own country, without trying to export any ideology.
FPM needs to apply MUCH better quality control to its articles.
We didn’t overthrow anything.
Yanukovich was ousted by his own Rada for constitutional violations.
> Is it too much for him to ask NATO to not put missiles right on his border pointing at Moscow?
Which hasn’t happened. Ukraine was legally a neutral country when Russia invaded in 2014. Fat lot of good that did it.
> and there are more commies in America in positions of influence than there are in Russia.
Because Russia helped put them there. Joseph McCarthy warned about this decades ago.
You did not read the article. You reacted to it. Facts hurt you.
Everything you said in your post is false.. You know nothing about the subject and are just reciting Moscow propaganda.
EU leaders have stated publicly – why don’t American leaders listen? – that their plan is to conquer Russia and break it up into 5 states. The West poses a mortal threat to Russia. I don’t love Putin, but the West is culpable in all of this. Also, Crimeans voted by something like 94% to join the Russian Federation, as they were so terrified of the leaders the US had installed in Kiev. I had close friends, a Russian/American couple, who visited Crimea one year after they joined the Russian Federation and the people of Crimea were out in the street celebrating for an entire week. They were happy. We speak of Crimea like it is US property. Do the people of Crimea not get a voice?
Thanks, Gordon, for a good comment. I cannot see any reason for anyone in this country to want to be enemies with the Russians. All I can see are reasons to want to be friends. with Russians. We rushed eagerly to violate the promises we made to Moscow. We promised to treat the Ukraine as a neutral zone, but we pursued a massive program of overtly making the Ukrainians enemies of Russia and of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
Why does the Left care about Putin ? What does the Left have to gain from Putin losing the war with Ukraine ? Is it a moral victory ? lol Lets be honest , the Left has no morals . So what is it that drives the Left against Putin ? Replacing Putin with someone that cooperates with the Lefts New World Order , that’s all they care about imho . They don’t care about anything else , the pain and suffering , the deaths , they couldn’t give a rats ass about any of it . They care about steering Russia into the New World Order alliance that will further bolster their plans of taking over the world . jmho
And sealing Russia’s natural resources.
The conflation of your ideas is an embarrassment to logic. Left. New World Order. Putin is evil and you choose to ignore it. Why?
Dazzling logic, Scarelet (sic) Pimpernel! By assuming the premise that Putin is evil, you prove the conclusion that Putin is evil. Genius!
So, everyone not painting Putin as evil is devoid of logic? Why didn’t we keep painting all Japanese as evil and all Germans as evil after WWII? A sage, a Russian sage, said, “The line between good and evil strikes through the heart of everyone.”
Russia IS part of the NWO agenda. The left actually supports them, not Ukraine.
Do you think the Putin-Xi World Order would be any better?
The Left is not where opposition to Putin lies.
Just whatever became of the KGB after the Soviet Union fell? They came to America and joined the Democrat Party
You have Putin Derangement Syndrome.
Why, was Russia an enemy after the Berlin Wall collapse?
Yes they were. They have never stopped being the enemy and one of several evil empires.. And their ilk. Djt pretty good: maybe too susceptible to flattery and too eager to make a deal but far superior to democrat party marxists/fascists. WWRWRD?
exactly reagan must be rolling around in his grave.
Russia still funds the Communist Party USA to this day.
Have you listened to the words of Russian leaders? They see us as their enemy and always will.
The world’s most dangerous man is whoever is pulling Chairman Xi’s strings. Mr. Putin is a steady hand, pursuing Russian nationalism, defending the Russian Orthodox Church, and balancing the influence of the oligarchs the West enabled after the fall of the Soviet Union against the interest of the motherland and its people. His position on Ukraine has not changed. He doesn’t want anti-Russian neighbors; he wants the residual Nazi contingent stamped out; and he wants the Russian-aligned provinces to be free from abuse by Kyiv. Strategically, he wants to protect Russian access to the Black Sea, and would have settled for Crimea had the Obama gang not engineered a color revolution in Ukraine in 2014.
For almost two centuries, Western powers have treated Russia as a pariah, joining the wrong side in the Crimean War, fomenting the Bolshevik revolution, and working against anyone who sought to bring post-Soviet Russia into the community of nations. Today the forever-war lobby in America is determined to push Russia into alignment with the Chinese Communist Party through sanctions and outright theft of Russian financial assets.
Clear thinkers can see that President Trump’s efforts at rapprochement are being resisted at every level in Foggy Bottom, in the E Ring of the Pentagon, in Brussels, and in Geneva. Fatuous European governments say they will help defend Ukraine, even as their economies falter and their military is an empty husk. And we slouch closer and closer to the abyss.
Wow. Your bizarre logic. The only thing you left out is the kitchen sink. Putin is evil and you support evil. Russia has never been a good country. A Country of serf slaves. A Country of gulags.
The country of Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. Still, I’m glad that you’ve revealed something here. All these America-as-global-hegemon policies, all these America-must-stand-up-to-Putin noises, are rooted not in any profound ideological commitment or geopolitical insight but in an irrational and ignorant hatred of Russia. Putin himself recently said as much — and traced this drooling Russophobia back to the reign of Ivan IV, who rejected the overtures of Latin Christianity in favor of continued Orthodoxy, and who was called “The Terrible” thereafter in the West. Thanks, Scarlet Pimpernel. It’s good to have these things out in the open.
One might think your ignorance is on display, but your other writings betray you as a forever war proponent. Western Europe was filled with princes who lorded over serfs for millennia. The Protestant Reformation was the hinge on which individual rights ascended in the West, and that might never have happened but for the invention of movable type and the proliferation of individual reading and understanding of the Bible. Russian people, too, love knowledge, God, and family. Equating them with the product of the Kaiser’s undermining of Romanov rule – the Soviet era and its subsequent oligarchic corruption – is wicked, and you should be ashamed. It is on par with saying China is evil because the people of the land are ruled by a powerful and corrupt minority.
The author is in cahoots with Victoria Nuland.
Nazis are Socialists. Like you.
There was no “coup.” Yanukovich was ousted by his own Rada.
> For almost two centuries, Western powers have treated Russia as a pariah
That’s rich, how?
They did not make them invade Crimea in 2014 and then lie about it. They did not make them negotiate and then violate Minsk.
> he wants the Russian-aligned provinces to be free from abuse by Kyiv
You mean Russian troops taking part in false flag ops led by Igor Girkin.
The innocent Putin must be your Halloween costume.
Louie Gohmert – You name rings chimes because you have been on the MAGA side – If I recall correctly.,
Your precise article reveals the propaganda and censorship of the main stream media. As I was reading, flashes of images of global history.
Also the communist practices that were on display during the illegitimate Biden regime and if we don’t ensure a nation that our founding fathers envisioned and provisioned for in our USA Constitution and Bill of Rights and President Trump 45/47 is pushing himself and looks like POTUS 47 Trump has the cabinet to a get this on track against the global forces with willing treasonous USA citizens elected to positions of power to wield the bidding of their puppet masters. We better get it right with Trump 47 and keep it MAGA or else!
God Bless You Sir!
That was not at all clear.
I’m more worried about what the globalist, neo-liberal, neo-con Uniparty elites here and in Western Europe are doing to enrich and empower themselves, while taxing and Cloward-and-Pivening Western Civ into exhaustion and collapse, than I am about Putin affecting anything beyond seizing, at the cost of many human lives and massive destruction of infrastructure, some territory adjacent to Russia.
I do see the situation in Ukraine as an unmitigated horror, as well as demographic suicide, for ordinary Ukrainians and Russians—with those who benefit from continuing this war (and I include Putin and Zelenskyy and NATO and the Daddy Warbucks crowd in general) being the great threat to us all.
Russian imperialism and alliance with China and other enemies cannot be ignored or played off by identifying other problems.
Not that I don’t agree with alot of this history. It is true. I just think the real danger is China. Not Russia. China has now aligned with Russia, India and now S. Korea? China is a MUCH bigger problem then Russia. IMO
Amen to China being our real existential threat, and a very active and PRESENT threat. The Ukraine war is NOT in the USA’s vital national interest. I am disappointed in Trump for not completely disengaging from this war in which we can only lose. Many Americans, some with big ‘voices’, are detached from the reality of our financial crisis. We can no longer police the entire planet. Period. No one can convince me that Russia is a threat to take over the world. Taking three years to conquer eastern Ukraine is proof enough.
Providing security for Ukraine, such as ‘air support’, is NOT ‘America First’. It is a betrayal of what I believed I was voting for. As you said, we must focus our resources on the real threat.
I still don’t understand why President Putin is a most dangerous man, Louie Gohmert. One might think President Xi, who controls all those Chinese studying here on how to “steal” American knowledge and technology more dangerous.
Evil twins in the worst meaning of this phrase.
Russia isn’t an enemy? Their current foreign policy of manifest destiny says otherwise. The anti-American propaganda coming from their media outlets says otherwise. Their support for Communist front groups in the West says otherwise. Their support for Iran says otherwise, and their continued support for North Korea – a proxy they can use to attack Japan, says otherwise.
We get to define who our enemies are. Not our enemies.
The difference at the moment is that Putin is actively expansionist.
1,000,000 deaths, casualties, and counting.
Good one Louie! Good to hear from you again. The Russian history is spot on! We must keep our thumb on Putin. He is evil!
Anatoliy Golitsyn warned us about this YEARS ago. Search “new lies for old pdf” and “the perestroika deception pdf” on DuckDuckGo and Brave Search.
As was Trevor Loudon and J.R. Nyquist. But they were ignored.
If Vladimir Putin be better and more fittingly categorized as a sociopath or a psychopath, the fact remains that he’s the one with the supreme power in the mighty nation of Russia and he is very dangerous.
About Russia and Ukraine, this current situation is obviously very serious.
Putin is very willing to have the Russian military murder many people of Ukraine to conquer that nation the more Ukrainians who are killed the greater will be the resentment and hate for the Russians invaders and the more resistance the Putin’s invaders will have.
If Putin does conquer, have to kill even more people and destroy the entire infrastructure of Ukraine.
Therefore, if Putin “wins” this war he stated it would be an empty victory for him because he will lose the respect of all the leader of the different countries of the world and by all the people in those countries will detest him.
All the people of the Ukraine will despise him for being responsible for the deaths of their family members and friends and taking their beauteous nation and making a total ruin out of it.
Putin has already lost all respect; next, he will lose his position power and end up imprisoned or being dead
That prison or death waits for Putin because he did make it for himself by his ordering all that horrendous bloody murderous violence by his wanting to invade and conquer Ukraine.
The astronomical Russian casualty figures are demonstrably fictitious, derived solely from the testimony of the same Ukrainian propaganda specialists who wanted us to believe in the Ghost of Kyiv. The Russians have taken far more casualties than we could tolerate — and far more than we should tolerate in a place as distant as Ukraine. But they have not lost the numbers reported in the West. And the Ukrainians are suffering far more casualties. Recently, there was an exchange of bodies. The Russians handed over an even thousand Ukrainian dead. The Ukrainians delivered nineteen dead Russians.
But you keep believing in the Ghost of Kyiv, Louie, if it makes you feel better. NATO is suffering a catastrophic military defeat in Ukraine. And Trump will damage his legacy to a monstrous degree if he links arms with our hapless “allies” — better characterized as parasites.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR HONESTY AND COMMON SENSE
Seems a lot of people, however, still believe in the Ghost of Kyiv.
NATO is not at war.
Yeah, it is. It’s just using Ukrainians as pawns. When it’s thoroughly defeated, it’ll blame the poor guys it fed into the meat grinder — and also claim that Russia has won only a Pyrrhic victory. But the global South is watching. Citizens of non-NATO countries will know how weak the West has become.
If NATO under Bush, Hussein O and Biden did not tray to encroached all around Russia. Putin wouldn’t invade part of Georgia, annex Crimea or go to war with Ukraine. America needs to look at the mirror and reevaluate the result of The American Empire. And return to American republic.
So Putin invaded countries that had not joined NATO. That just means they should have.
Putin pushed countries into NATO. Sweden was neutral. Finland was called Finlandized, silent on foreign policy, for 80 years.
Neo-con foreign policy united Russia and China in opposition to the U.S. I think we’ll have to worry a lot more about that alliance than Russia will have to worry about Sweden or Finland.
Except Russia had been involved in military misadventures in Georgia as far back as the early 90s, well before NATO came into the picture.
No we don’t want to go to hot war with Russia. There are lots of “most dangerous men”. The guy in China. The guy in N. Korea, George Soro, Mamdany. Chuch Schumer. Erdohan in Turkey. Etc. Etc….
UKRAINE IS NOT WORTH SENDING OUR TROOPS TO DIE !!!! Russia is no bombing us like the Japanese and Germans did.
Except Russia had been involved in military misadventures in Georgia as far back as the early 90s, well before NATO came into the picture.
Ukraine was legally a neutral country when Russia invaded in 2014.
Gordon,
You and Ron, Sebastian, and CTripps have bought into Russian propaganda hook, line, sinker. NATO has never invaded Russia, NATO is a defensive alliance. Look up the Budapest Memorandum.. Russia, USA, and GB pledged to respect Ukraine ‘s sovereignty and defend her, if attacked.
In 2014, The Maidan Revolution forced the Russian aligned Ukrainian
president to flee to Moscow. UKraine is standing in the gap between Putin’s aggression and the peace of Eastern Europe and ultimately the west. Putin is a maniac waging 95% of his war against innocent civilians, killing and destroying churches(650). Watch Www.AFaithUnderSiege.com. then you will understand you have been played by a truly evil dictator..
When it came right down to it the Bolsheviks were far worst then t he Nazis and Mao was by far bigger Mass Murderer then Hitler
In my opinion, an even more dangerous person is NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. With his warmongering rhetoric.