Putin has Been ‘Absolute Evil’ from the Beginning, Zaidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – Many in both Russia and the West who are now appalled by what Putin is doing but who earlier looked at him with hope and even supported him are now pushing the well-known thesis that the current Kremlin leader in fact began in a promising way but has gone wrong, Vadim Zaidman says.

            But those who had positive views about Putin earlier and only now see that he isn’t what they thought he was are the ones who are wrong, the commentator says. Had they looked more closely, they would have seen that what “this promising person” was doing in Chechnya was a dress rehearsal for what he is doing in Ukraine”(kasparov.ru/material.php?id=63F364E65D1B9).

            Those who are now trying to cover their own mistakes by suggesting that Putin has changed should remember “who blew up the apartment houses in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk,” and they should face up to the fact that while they were being positive about him, he was committing genocide in Chechnya.

            That Putin was initially viewed in a positive light is not because he was positive but because of the blindness of Western leaders who failed to look at what Putin started doing from his first day in power and continues to do. “He has not changed during all the years of his rule.” The only difference now is that people can’t deny what was already obvious.

            “The man who began his reign by blowing up apartment houses containing his own citizens and committing genocide in Chechnya was the personification of absolute evil from the very beginning. His end could not help but be terrible because he start was already so obviously the same.