OPINION: Putin’s Aim and How to Foil it

Is the madman in Moscow a shapeshifting lizard? Whatever his status, he wants to destroy Ukraine and all it represents. NATO must do more.

We know Putin wants the world to forget Ukraine and Ukrainians. The Russian psycho wants to wipe Ukraine off the map to weaken the world’s resolve against Russia. If there’s no Ukraine, there’s no point fighting Russia. The maniac wants to go back to business as usual with the West.

Putin’s propaganda machine is going to keep painting Russians as the good guys who defended themselves against Ukrainian “Nazis.” Russian propagandists can’t wait to proclaim the end of the child-killing “Kyiv regime” to the world. Putin would love to see Ukrainians living abroad forced to get Russian passports, since Ukraine would be reunited with the so-called motherland. Reunited and wiped off the map mean the same thing in Putin’s alternative reality.

Putin’s propagandists are going to be ordered to make sure Ukraine is just a footnote in history.

Putin’s plan for Ukraine is eerily similar to Hitler’s plan for Poland. By the way, what’s with the “frozen conflict” talk? Does Putin strike you as the “frozen conflict” kind of guy? If anything, he’s going to step up missile attacks on Ukraine in the winter because he is offended by Ukraine existing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the maniac is dreaming of killing more Ukrainians than Stalin.

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Putin sees destroying Ukraine as a sacrifice on the altar of Russian imperialism. Surprisingly, though, he doesn’t really care about Russia. He is using Russia as a tool to fulfill his fantasies of death and destruction. He won’t hesitate to use nukes if his grip on power is seriously threatened, Russia be damned. L’état, c’est moi. I am the state. That’s Putin’s thinking.

Worrying signs point to Russian propaganda slowly succeeding in demonizing Ukrainians. Even in Poland, anti-Ukrainian sentiment sometimes floods the comments. The commenters are Russian bots and nasty, selfish, people who unload their frustrations on Ukrainians.

Most alarmingly, Russian propaganda is infecting the minds of Americans. You’ll be surprised (or not) how many people in the U.S. see Russia as a beacon of sanity in the degenerate world.

And no, this isn’t just a fringe group. Twelve million Americans believe shape-shifting reptilians run the world. Twelve million! How many Americans have been brainwashed to see Russia as a savior? Russian propagandists are experts at twisting people’s perceptions.

What happens when Nick Fuentes, who openly praises Hitler and Putin, wins the U.S. election? Never going to happen? Never say never. Trump wasn’t supposed to win, remember? Do you think people who can’t find Ukraine on a map won’t vote for Fuentes?

These people think Polish and Ukrainian are dialects of Russian! I share your pain, Ukrainians. I was mistaken for a Russian many times. Ignorance is running rampant in the world. Case in point, I exchanged views with a former ambassador of an African nation to South Korea. At one point, he told me that all he knew about Europe was the Berlin Conference that regulated European colonization and trade in Africa.

The best part? He respects Russia because she helped his country gain independence from Western colonizers. Is the former ambassador an evil person? No, he’s just an old-school diplomat who has a tragically misinformed view of Russia.

We all use (often woefully inaccurate) mind maps to interpret reality, we all rely on stereotypes and rumors to navigate the world. When I worked in Chengdu, a Chinese girl told me that Poland is a “place where women get their hands kissed so much, they roll their eyes in disgust.” A weirdly cool stereotype, I must say. Better than many negative ones I’ve heard over the years.

The way Ukrainians control the narrative about their country is impressive. Ukraine is an open society. Volodymyr Zelensky doesn’t need several doubles to survive.

Speaking of doubles, how do we even know Putin is still alive and his double hasn’t taken over? We assume Putin won’t use nuclear weapons because high-ranking Russian military officials won’t let him. Chain of command prevents the misuse of nuclear weapons. Really?

Putin has been in power for 22 years. Are you telling me he hasn’t made sure only the fanatics unquestioningly devoted to him are in charge of nukes? Come on, don’t be absurdly naive. We don’t really know anything about Putin. He could be a psychopath, he could be possessed, he could be a madman. He could be all three. Sheer speculation.

We know for a fact that Putin is a modern expression of the medieval mentality: Russia must be a proud nation and Russia must be feared. What the world needs, however, is for Russia to undergo total de-russification, not in a linguistic sense, but in the realm of imperial mindset and atavistic political “culture.”   It’s the only way to get rid of the Russian threat once and for all.

A coup isn’t going to change Russia and neither will a collapsed, failed state, immersed in a civil war, causing problems for everyone around it. Only a fundamental shift in the Russian mentality will save Europe, and possibly the world.

Otherwise, sooner than later, Russia will start expanding and exploiting again, killing, castrating, robbing and raping as it has always done. Russia has no limits and NATO needs to play by the rules. Who do you think has an advantage?

NATO isn’t supposed to sink to Russia’s level, I get it, but what if there’s no choice? Do you really think negotiating with a terrorist state and a death cult is going to work? Negotiating with Russia is like taking a psychopath to therapy to teach him empathy. The psychopath will fool the therapist by pretending he has developed empathy and then use all the tricks he has learned from the therapist to manipulate people even better.

Russia uses negotiations to identify the weaknesses of the enemy. Sure, Russian diplomats are will tell the world what it wants to hear. They will sign all sorts of peace treaties. Surely, Russia wouldn’t lie so brazenly to the world? Little lies here and there, of course, but constructing the whole narrative to serve the Russian imperial agenda? No way

Behind closed doors, the mask of stereotypical Russian seriousness drops and Russian diplomats laugh at the hopelessly naive, intellectually impaired, Western politicians.

Russia isn’t interested in reaching an agreement. Russia wants to expand and exploit, even use a tactical nuke here and there. Fans of negotiating with Russia sometimes say that an unjust peace is better than a just war. Let’s do nothing and wait for millions of Ukrainians to freeze to death, then. No Ukraine, no problem, back to business as usual with Russia.

Ukrainians are practical and smart. They have no time for dumb and delusional thinking straight out of La-la-land. Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.

And Ukrainians aren’t just preparing: they are actively fighting the horde. No one is safe from the orcs, not even the animals. Russians even stole the, now famous, raccoon, actively trying to Russify it, no doubt. Stepan the cat is using his fame to help Ukraine. And when, hopefully, Ukraine wins, I want to see Stepan the cat in Putin’s Kremlin office, posing with a glass of wine like a boss.