Window on Eurasia: Putin’s Most Fateful Words Not about Ukraine but about ‘Traitors’ inside Russia, Babchenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 19 – Not surprisingly, many in Russia and the West have focused on Vladimir Putin’s comments about Crimea, Russian military journalist Arkady Babchenko  says.  But most important words in the Kremlin leader’s remarks are his references to a “certain fifth column” and “various kinds of national traitors.”

In a blog post on Ekho Moskvy today, Babchenko says that such words in the mouth of the Russian president can be extended by him to “all those who work in independent media or did before these were closed,” “who didn’t want war,” “who did not want a flood of caskets containing their children,” “who are for free elections,” and “who are against corruption and thievery. (echo.msk.ru/blog/ababchenko/).

In short, the journalist says, this category includes “all those, to be banal, who are for freedom”

            For Putin, “all [of those in these categories] are national traitors,” Babchenko continues. By expressing this view in the way that he has, Putin has chosen that he has chosen “the vector of domestic policy” and that “very little time remains” until mass repressions begin.” Putin and his regime “simply have no other way.”

            “From that moment when the father of the peoples from the tribune pronounces the words ‘enemies of the people,’ out of all the future possible variants of the country, only one remains – to the camps.  This is a one-way street,” a street that includes purges, pogroms, war, then civil war, and after it, disintegration ad collapse.