Putin Talks about Turning Away from Europe But Neither He nor Russians Really Have – and That Reality will Define the Future, ‘Continuation Follows’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 15 – Vladimir Putin talks constantly about rejecting the West and turning to the East but largely because he is disappointed and even outraged that the West did not accept him on his terms, the Continuation Follows portal says. But in fact, neither he nor even more Russians in general have done so and that reality will define the future.

            Even at a time when Moscow propagandists assert that China and even North Korea are closer to Russia, the portal continues, “adoration of the West has only intensified and in no way has gone in the other direction” as seen by the coverage of Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson (prosleduet.media/details/adoration-of-the-west/).

            “At the dawn of his political career, Vladimir Putin very very much wanted to be friends with Europe and not simply become friends but perhaps even before part of some block.” For him, “the West was important, needed and loved in Russia.” But this didn’t happen because the West wasn’t prepared to take Russia in unless it transformed itself in ways it had required others.

            Putin’s disappointment at that led him to deliver his “legendary Munich speech” in 2007 in which he said Russia would go its own way and if that meant breaking with the West so be it. But this disappointment was that of a spurned lover rather than someone who had concluded that there was no commonality. And that sense was even deeper among other Russians.

            Unfortunately, Kremlin propagandists do everything they can “to make every Russian a hostage of Putin’s psychosis” even though the Putinists “do not know and do not want to recognize that many Russians long ago became part of the globalized world,” not just the Western but the whole world including the West.

            That is obvious if one looks at how Russians dress and act and at what they admire, the portal argues, characteristics of Russians today that show that “we have outgrown the current regime,” even if because of its coercive powers, they are forced to mouth its statements which they increasingly do not accept.

            The editors of the portal conclude that “this picture will soon be changed; and [after Putin leaves the scene,” it will be these modern Russians who will restart a new, healthy and independent life in our country,” a Russia that will remain and indeed become even more part of the West than ever before.

            And no one has to do anything for this to happen except to wait out the survival of “the current elderly elites who are stuck in the delirium of post-Soviet trauma.” In short, this future and not the one Putin talks about will come simply as the working out of the life expectancy of the members of the current elite.