Putin has Only One Goal and Only Those who Want to Be Deceived Are, Skobov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 14 – The media is full of agitated discussions about what Putin’s “real” war goals are given that the Kremlin leader seems to be constantly changing them, but in fact, Aleksandr Skobov says, he has only one goal, and only those who want to be deceived on that point are being deceived.

            But everyone must recognize, the Russian commentator says, that all of Putin’s announced goals, “defending ‘the people of the Donbass,’ liberating all Ukraine from ‘nationalists’ and overthrowing the world hegemony of the United States, are only aspects of a much larger goal he has pursued consistently (graniru.org/opinion/skobov/m.284973.html).

            Like Hitler before him, Putin wants to destroy the existing international order based on law and impose a new one based not only on the permissibility of his using force at his choosing but also on the rejection of law and rights as the basis of international relations, Skobov continues.

            Those like US-based Andrey Piontkovsky who have pointed this out have been laughed at just as those who said that of Hitler before he launched his war. “But when Hitler unleashed his world war, the laughing stopped.” Now, faced with an equivalent threat, it is time for the laughing to stop as well.

            Like Hitler, Putin has simple goals. He is committed to the idea that “the world must recognize his right to annex territory from other countries” and “his right to bomb other countries to form them to change their political system or policies.” And thus it must accept as a fait accomplice the overthrow of US hegemony and the establishment of his own world state.

            As Skobov points out, “the present-day world order was created to a significant degree by the efforts of the US and has been maintained thanks to its leadership.” And at the foundation of this world order are “the principles of the supremacy of law, the priority of human rights, the equality of peoples, a ban on annexations and aggression and a ban on unilateral use of force.”

            Putin like Hitler doesn’t accept any of these principles; and again like Hitler, he is prepared to go to war to overthrow them and those who back them because what he wants is a new world order that he defines and dominates.

            The current world order was born in the course of resistance to the challenge of Absolute Evil that Hitler posed. Indeed, one can say with some justice that the Anti-Hitler coalition led to the rise of “an anti-fascist world order,” Skobov says. Now that a war is going on in the center of Europe for the first time since 1945, the West must reflect upon that.

            “It must recognize and state openly that a war is going on with a reviving form of Nazism,” this time from Russia but no less than 80 years ago a war with “Absolute Evil.” Skobov argues that “the world must recognize this war as an anti-fascist war” and not some sideshow or secondary conflict.

            And that means it must again act as it did earllier to “a complete and unconditional capitulation of the aggressor who unleashed this war, to the liquidation of the Nazi regime in Russia, and to the punishment of the current Nazi criminals, not just the military but those who prepared the basis for military crimes by feeing the people with the poison of Nazi ideology.”