Truth by truth, Vladimir Putin’s veneer is beginning to crack.
On Monday, a Russian envoy to the United Nations told his colleagues that Putin could have spent the last two decades “developing the country” but instead turned it “into some kind of total horror, a threat to the world.”
“For 20 years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on Feb. 24 of this year,” said Boris Bondarev, a mid-level diplomat who now, obviously, is looking for a new job. Not in government.
Because of Putin’s iron-fist control of what Russian citizens can know about the assault on Ukraine, most will not be aware of this latest volley against Putin.
That’s OK.
As this unprovoked war drags on, we all need to be reminded of why it began in the first place, less our allegiance to democracy wane.
According to Bondarev, insatiable greed is at the root.
“Those who conceived this war want only one thing — to remain in power forever, live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian Navy … and complete impunity,” Bondarev said in his email. “To achieve that they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes.”
Bondarev isn’t the first to suspect that Putin instigated the war as a means to distract Russians from the fact that he’s a failure at just about everything that doesn’t require brute force. That’s what happens when a leader lacks the intellectual and moral depth required to effectively lead and inspire people to greater heights.
Instead, public discontent was growing about Russia’s stagnating economy and lack of direction.
Putin’s most recent version of the war is that Russia is the victim of Western aggression and that he is duty bound to protect it.
By casting the war as a moral imperative, Putin’s propaganda machine is convincing Russians of the necessity to go to extreme measures — including nuclear war — against the West. Increasingly, Russian state commentators refer to nuclear attacks in an almost nonchalant manner, Bondarev said.
In his work with the foreign service, Bondarev said the ignorance of his colleagues about the ramifications of a nuclear attack is frightening.
“They think that if you hit some village in America with a nuclear strike, then the Americans will immediately get scared and run to beg for mercy on their knees,” Bondarev said. “That’s how many of our people think, and I fear that this is the line that they are passing along to Moscow.”
And when he raised the specter of “radioactive ruins,” his colleagues replied that is the cost of defending “traditional values” against a decadent West.
Bondarev is beyond brave to call out Putin and his cronies’ barbarism. More need to step up to the plate. And the closer to Putin, the better.