Paul Goble
Staunton, Feb. 20 – Horrific reports about how a Russian general shared with his wife pictures of the ears of Ukrainian prisoners his men had cut off have led Vladimir Pastukhov to conclude that Putin’s war in Ukraine is leaving Russia with several hundred thousand morally debased people who can’t be easily cured and who will be a threat for decades.
The London-based Russian commentator says that Russia is at risk of “ending up with several hundred thousand people as a result of this war, not just morally depraved or corrupted by bloodshed and murder but clinically incurable and irreversibly ill” (t.me/v_pastukhov/1827 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/v-konechnom-schete-vyyasnitsya-chto-odinakovo-bolny-i-voevavshie-i-ne-voevavshie).
Such people, Pastukhov continues, “will pose a colossal threat” to the country, corroding all constructive social ties and relationships from family to political life, affecting public health in a way comparable to the impact of Novichok on the health of an individual. That is, they will block the transmission of social signals across all communication channels.”
The Putin regime acts as if they can be brought back into society without any negative consequences because of its adaptation programs, but that is not the case. These people will continue to live and have an impact on society for decades until their deaths and after that because of the impact they will have on others who didn’t take part in the war.
Of course, Pastukhov concedes, it is “naïve” to think that this is a consequence of Putin’s war alone. Its links to the events of the 1990s is “obvious.” But “it’s just that all the violence that presented itself as the norm in the first and second Chechen campaigns and before that in Afghanistan has been scaled up tens and hundreds of times in the current war.”
And he concludes: “It took almost 40 years to bring society to this state, and it will take no less time to get society out of it.”
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