By Saying Russia Must Not be Defeated Lest it Use Nuclear Weapons, Yavlinsky is ‘an Accomplice of the New Hitler,’ Skobov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 7 – In a new article (novaya.media/articles/2023/02/04/prekratite), Grigory Yavlinsky argeus that “Putin’s Russia cannot be defeated” lest Moscow decide to use nuclear weapons, thus repeating a threat the Kremlin has already made and making himself into “an accomplice of the new Hitler,” Aleksandr Skobov says.

            By invoking the supreme value of human life to justify giving Putin everything he wants, Yavlinsky may only be striving to save his own skin and that of others, a perhaps understandable position. But in fact, he is devaluing human life as Putin has already done by his aggression, the Russian commentator says (graniru.org/opinion/skobov/m.287235.html)..

            “There are always people prepared to submit to any rapist because own skin is dear to them than is human dignity,” Skobov says. But at the same time, “there are always others who are ready to die rather than submit. The two groups have always disliked each other” because the victory of one depends on the defeat of the other.

            What also is important and must be remembered, the Russian commentator says, is that this dispute is not something that can be decided by some kind of vote. Rather, it is decided in every case “solely by will, the will of some not to submit to the rapist no matter what and the will of others to save their own skins no matter what.”

            Yavlinsky likes to talk about how much the world has changed, but the changes he clearly hopes for are not the changes that are taking place. He hopes for a world in which it doesn’t matter who controls territory, but in fact, by making his argument, Yavlinsky is helping to build a world in which “nothing matters except saving your own skin.”

               Putin has shown the world that for him and those who support him, human life is not worth anything. But what matters is this, Skobov says, even though Yavlinsky doesn’t understand. “It will be impossible to restore the value of human life in the world without destroying those have devalued it.”

               And because that is true, the commentator concludes, everyone needs to recognize that Yavlinsky and others like him who favor giving in to Putin’s demands because of the risk Putin will use nuclear weapons are “accomplices of the new Hitler, people who in principle are no different than the accomplices of the old Hitler” in the past.