Paul Goble
Staunton, May 17 – Many Russians to this day are certain that Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage were Western agents charged with destroying the USSR. Now, at least some are speculating that the same thing may be true of Vladimir Putin whose disastrous policies only make sense if that is the case, Vadim Zaidman says.
The Russian commentator points out that he raised this possibility a decade ago (rubezh.eu/Zeitung/2011/12/00.htm) but that there seems to be ever more evidence that this is the only adequate explanation for Putin policies that hurt rather than help Russia and put it on the
The Kremlin leader’s war in Ukraine, something completely senseless from the point of view of Russian interests, Zaidman continues, makes perfect sense if he is in fact a Western agent sent to destroy Russia. After all, no Russian leader ever has taken so many steps to destroy his own country.
“If you think about it,” he says, “there is nothing improbable in this version of events. Russian government officials an patriots … are always asserting that the US and in general the West are constantly thinking about how they can demolish and destroy Russia. What would be surprising if they actually undertook steps” like this toward that goal?
Those who ask where is the evidence for the assertion that “Putin is an agent of the State Department” need only look around. Putin’s actions are all the evidence anyone could possibly need. After all, Zaidman says, “if Putin looks like an agent of the State Department, talks like an agent of the State Department and most important acts like one, perhaps in fact, he is.”
To be sure, Zaidman doesn’t really believe what he is saying; but the fact that he is saying what likely many other Russians given as they frequently are to conspiratorial thinking and the assumption that invisible forces are behind everything, this perspective further undermines Putin and his standing with his own population, just as it did with Gorbachev.
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