It was surreal. I don’t know how many in the
West watched the pitiful spectacle from Moscow yesterday when each and every
member of Putin’s security council was instructed to come out and “vote” whether
to recognize the independence of DNR and LNR, so that they all end up collectively
responsible for the decision. It was as
if you were witnessing schoolchildren performing in front of a strict teacher, except
that this was chilling. Some of them stumbled and were corrected by
Putin how to say “yes”. Others were more
in control, but almost all of them felt awkward and uneasy and some even scared.
If there ever was a lesson on what decision-making in an autocratic regime
looks like, this was it.
In short, it was embarrassing
to witness this some 85 years after the show trials of the 1930s
We've translated the conversation from Russian to English. Here's what it says: pic.twitter.com/eDAJx237k4
— Donald Standeford (@Don_Standeford) February 22, 2022
There are precedents
in Russian history of this kind of deliberate humiliation of subordinates.
Stalin comes to mind.
George F.
Kenan, Memoirs 1925-1950, page 294.
"Those of my
colleagues who saw more of him than I did have told of being able to observe
other aspects of his personality: of seeing the yellow eyes lit up in a flash
of menace and fury as he turned, momentarily on some unfortunate subordinate;
of witnessing the diabolical sadism with which, at the great diplomatic dinners
of the war, he would humiliate his subordinates before the eyes of the
foreigners, with his barbed, mocking toasts, just to show his power over them."
How come the West so gravely miscalculated?
Several days ago, answering the question whether Ukrainians would after it turned out that Putin did not attack on Feb 16, have a warmer attitude towards Putin because he did not lie, Ukrainian journalist Leonid Shvets answered ( google translate):
Leonid Shvets: They are
now looking at him with different eyes in the sense that these endlessly long
tables at which he receives foreign leaders and his own ministers, this whole
situation with the twisting of tension, a sharp escalation, unfortunately,
suggests that he goes very far away somewhere in his own world, where there is
no place for those who are dissatisfied with the rule of Vladimir Vladimirovich
Putin. Least of all he is now interested in the opinion of the Russians. He is
solving some of his internal problems, and they are psychological in nature on
the verge of psychopathy.
Леонид
Швец: На него смотрят сейчас другими глазами в том смысле, что эти бесконечно
длинные столы, за которыми он принимает иностранных лидеров и своих собственных
министров, вся эта ситуация с закручиванием напряжения, резким обострением, к
сожалению, говорит о том, что он очень далеко уходит куда-то в свой мир, где
нет места тем, кто недоволен правлением Владимира Владимировича Путина. Меньше
всего его сейчас интересует мнение россиян. Он решает какие-то свои внутренние
проблемы, а они носят психологический характер на грани психопатии.
