'Putin May Well Go Down in History as Last Ruler of a Place Called Russia,' Martynov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 1 – Because of Vladimir Putin’s vicious and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and his increasingly repressive policies at home, Russia over the last ten months has become “the symbol of a caricature of evil,” Kirill Martynov says, with the consequences of his actions spreading into all aspects of Russian life.

            Russia is now ruled by “a dictator besotted with infinite power, cut off from the people and from real life;” and despite several tens of thousands of protesters, there is no one in Russia to stop him from engaging in what looks like national suicide, the editor of Novaya gazeta now published abroad (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2022/12/31/mezhdu-otchaianiem-i-soprotivleniem).

            Russian society “reeks with fear; and in universities, schools and offices, people have learned to be silent and turn away” from what is going on around them, allowing Putin and his camarilla to continue to behave as they are and threatening the future of Russia and themselves as well.

            According to Martynov, “Vladimir Putin possibly will go down in history as the last ruler of a country called Russia” because it is “difficult to imagine how our motherland will be able to right itself after the catastrophe created in honor of his 70^th birthday. Nero with his fires was a piker: he didn’t have the present-day technologies” Putin does.

            Martynov offers what he describes as “an incomplete list of what the authorities of the Rusian Federation have done to harm their own people”: the demise of Russian education, demographic collapse, economic decay and decline, a legal system that doesn’t work, Russian sports in their worst shape ever, and Russian culture in a state of collapse.

            “There is not a single sphere of life that Putin’s war has not touched,” the editor says. As a result, he says he is “sure that ‘the special military operation’ will go down in history as an example of radical incompetence as it is difficult to find any other cases of such stupidity at least in recent times.”

            Because of what Putin has done, Martynov continues, “we are guaranteed the eternal hatred of our neighbors, a European people of some 40 million. I’m not sure if my friends in Kyiv will want to talk to me now. After all, when I promised to do everything I could, I still believed we could stop the killers.”

            He says that when he asked the readers of his paper last month what they were proud of, they spoke about “the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, that in the face of aggression by a terrible enemy, Ukraine has reliable allies … and that even cruise missile, cold and darkness could not break the spirit of the Ukrainian people.”

            As Russians, Martynov says, we must be honest with ourselves and recognize that 2023 will be even worse than 2022 was. “Putin will dry to drag Ukraine, Russia and if possible all of humanity into hell after him.” Faced with that, each Russian must really try to do whatever he or she can to stop him and save themselves, their country and the world.