Putin Doesn’t Understand Full Consequences of War He has Begun, VTOTs Leader Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 2 – Vladimir Putin doesn’t understand the danger that his attack on Ukraine may grow into a nuclear war or of what that would mean for Russia and the world, according to Farit Zakiyev, the leader of the All-Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) who has gone into at least temporary emigration in Turkey.

            Zakiyev, who himself served in the strategic rocket forces and thus knows more about nuclear war than many, says that tragically Russia is now being led by people like Putin without training or knowledge about what nuclear war means and thus who think that they could somehow win one (idelreal.org/a/31786521.html).

            No country including Russia could win a nuclear war, he continues; and even talking about it loosely as Putin and some of his associates have is dangerous because it normalizes the idea of such a conflict and thus lowers the bar against someone starting it when it would otherwise be easily avoidable.

            Zakiyev says he chose to leave Russia in protest against Putin’s war in Ukraine and the danger that it could grow into something worse. Before leaving, he says, he did not call for mass protests because he personally has medical problems and, had he been arrested and sentenced to prison, might not have survived.

            In addition, he adds, “in Russia it is now absolutely impossible to carry on with the social political activity of the All-Tatar Social Center,” the oldest and one of the most prominent Tatar national movements. Many of his colleagues in the group remain inside Russia, but they do are constrained from action by state policy.

            While Zakiyev says he hopes to return at some point if and when conditions make that possible, his words suggest that in addition to not understanding nuclear war, Putin does not understand the nature of the opposition he faces and is cracking down across the board rather than selectively in ways that would make more sense even for his regime.

            While VTOTs at the end of Soviet times was quite radical, it rapidly became one of the more moderate Tatar nationalist groups, prepared to cooperate with the authorities and not given to pushing for radical goals such as Tatar independence. As a result, many radicals shifted away from it and formed their own groups.

            The Putin regime, however, has campaigned against VTOTs every bit as much and perhaps more than other Tatar nationalist groups, thus eliminating a force of moderation and driving more people in that Middle Volga republic either into despair or into the arms of radicals (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/moscow-closes-down-all-tatar-social.html).

            Driving Zakiyev into emigration – and significantly, he did not face the obstacles to leaving from the authorities that he had expected – will only accelerate this process. That Putin clearly doesn’t understand that danger is almost as frightening as his failure to understand the nature of nuclear war.