On Vladimir Putin's 70th birthday
Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin turns 70 years old, which is quite a big age. Generally, people of his psychological type and physical condition, given his many health problems, do not live long, so another anniversary of Putin does not look good for him at all. Putin's good tradition of celebrating anniversaries on the blood he himself spilled began in 2012 and continues to this day. He celebrated his 60th birthday while suppressing the protests on Bolotnaya Square — 10 years later, by happy (or not so happy) coincidence, his anniversary falls in the eighth month of the bloody war with Ukraine.
To be honest, we should be writing an obituary, not a profile. But today, the propaganda media devotes a lot of praise to Putin about what he has turned Russia into, while opposition media articles about the Russian president's war crimes fail to reach their audiences. It turns out that the viewer only sees how Russia has gotten better under Putin. This is the result of years of clearing the media field of information potentially damaging to the president's image. Let's discuss in more detail how Putin cleaned up his poop the information about himself.
From the moment he came to power, Putin wanted to do anything to please the public and raise his ratings. Books began to be written about him: in “First Person” by Natalia Gevorkyan, Putin was so eager to show himself that his wife at the time, Lyudmila Putin, marveled at his bluster. He even, in the best traditions of masculinity, wanted to show the West his tough stance, particularly with regard to NATO, but the authors did not know what form to put this statement in, so the chapter came out in its original form.
In 2016, however, the love affair with the president's written biography came to an end: after the release of “Panama Papers”, which named his friend, cellist Roldugin, as one of Putin's "wallets" — the book told about the musician in detail — the book was removed from the Kremlin website.
One of the other reasons why the world has seen almost no more biographies of Putin in any form is the statements of Lyudmila Putin. From them we could draw conclusions about the relationship between the president and the first lady: he did not help his wife at all — she did all the housework and shopping herself even during the 7th month of pregnancy with the second child — because he believed that "a woman in the house should do everything herself"; Vladimir was always more than an hour late for a date — this knowledge appears in a new light if we compare data that journalists already know — in 2003 his mistress Svetlana Krivonogikh gave birth to his daughter Luisa.
"Vampire," as his wife described him in an interview with Irene Pietsch, he sucked all the moral strength out of her. He famously described the meat she cooked as "dry," which made her very upset and devalued her efforts. The same Irene Pietsch, whose book "Fragile Friendships" never saw the light of day in Russia, described Lyudmila's emotions connected with the feeling that Putin was cheating on her. The now ex-wife of the president admitted that her relationship with her husband was strained, she did not understand his jokes, and after the divorce she spoke of her ex-husband as "unassuming" and most ordinary.
This was the main criterion for the ban on publishing books about Putin's life. Oleg Blotsky, who wrote a very complimentary book about Putin, never understood why his work was censored, because the book was praiseworthy and he did not even break the rule not to write a word about Putin's daughters. Irene Pietsch, on the other hand, was not only guilty of the same thing, but also of describing Putin's children.
This is an understandable reaction if we remember that Putin is seriously mentally ill. One of the symptoms of his illness is megalomania. As a child, he experienced the trauma of living in a St. Petersburg suburb where there was an upper and lower caste, while he belonged to an inferior one. Since then, he has developed an understanding — or at least a belief in the appropriation of this stigma — you either beat the opps or you get beaten. Hence the mockery of Western leaders if they agree to concessions and negotiations — if one concedes to someone, in Putin's eyes, one “fawns over the other on his hind legs”, — an absolutely gangsterous: "If a fight is inevitable, you have to hit first" — and the need for hypercompensation for the defect.
Putin talks openly about his oppressive sense of defect: in addition to the mechanism of projection, during which he sees all of his defects in the leaders of Western countries, from interview to interview he retells the story of the rat which he chased down the stairwell and cornered, and then it jumped on him. Obviously this story worries him so much for the reason that it has a certain symbolism for him: the rat, cornered and therefore in desperation, begins to attack his persecutor, is him.
The coping strategy which he may choose for himself due to his abilities, is the solution of issues by force where he is able to control the situation the most. Thus, he has brought in the special services to forcibly (!) shut down a tabloid (!) that deliberately spread disinformation about Putin's new chosen mistress in order to watch the regime react. This is something he knows how to do from his past experience. As Valeriya Novodvorskaya said of him: “A Jackboot will never build a legal state. Jackboot can only build a jail”.
In order to appear to be a bigger man than he really is, Putin wants to see material that either shows him as "the simple guy from the trenches" or portrays him as a hero who saves the world from terrorism. In the first type of movies, Putin was filmed once, having to coordinate a script and build a separate pavilion to give the impression that the conversation was taking place in director Shadhan's kitchen. It was the only movie that came out, and only once. In the other movies one could find criticism of Putin — in "The President's Classmates," two of Putin's classmates criticized the latter for being authoritarian.
The movie shown on TVC television channel and devoted to Putin's maximum detachment from the people, was also shown once. And this was followed by the firing of producers, directors, and staffers. That's exactly what they said — for this movie.
Viktor Shenderovich's program "Puppets" stopped broadcasting after the episode in which Vladimir Vladimirovich appears to the audience in the image of baby Tsakhes.
But the movie, which showed Putin as a hero who fights against terrorism, is no longer filmed in a "warm kitchen" with "the simple guy," but in the offices of the Kremlin, where Putin is already sitting in his work suit.
Another symptom is persecution mania. The movie director Nikita Mikhalkov once told the public about one of his personal meetings with Putin. They were walking in the park, and then Putin said to Mikhalkov Jr.: "Can you imagine, all the intelligence agencies of the world now know that you and I are walking down this path. Can you imagine what kind of life this is?" In these conditions, against the backdrop of undermined mental health, failures are blamed on the “enemies of Russia”.
Overlapping symptoms create a general picture of paranoid disorder: “Putin is very afraid of an assassination attempt. The drivers, cleaners, cooks, gardeners are all men, Putin does not trust women”. This is a very recognizable style of the dictators — every six months Joseph Stalin also changed guards and was constantly moving from one location to another. It is absolutely clear why both are afraid, and no matter how much they talk about their fear of wiretaps by Western intelligence services, what they are really afraid of is their own peoples.
But let's not forget that in addition to his paranoid disorder, Putin also has a pronounced psychopathy — the term is applied according to the medical classification. The main difference between a psychopath and someone with another mental disorder is the absence of empathy. This does not mean that he does not feel emotions and does not understand what other people feel — they, on the opposite, feel the emotions of others very subtly and skillfully manipulate them. They are very calculating and surely know how to crap on anyone who openly displeases them.
Thus in 2007, when Angela Merkel came to Russia for negotiations, according to experts and people present at the meeting, Putin knew that the Chancellor of Germany was afraid of dogs because of her childhood trauma. Right in the middle of the meeting he let his Labrador, Connie, into the cabinet, after which Merkel visibly tensed up. This tension is extremely important to Putin: in this way you can assert your own superiority over someone who is not at home, but in your country, and, playing on the feeling of discomfort of your interlocutor, make him play by your rules. Later, propaganda will say that Putin did not know about Merkel's phobia, but this is not true - he knew about it perfectly well, which is why he allowed himself to mock his interlocutor.
It is exactly the same with Alexei Navalny. In November 2021, we were told in detail about the special conditions that were created for Alexei in the penal colony in order to undermine his morale. If, as the politician's supporters say, Putin himself is letting down the methods of bullying the opposition activist, he is doing the same thing: he is trying to make the condition of someone who already has no way of improving the current state of affairs as worse as possible.
They say that his psychopathy manifested itself long ago — even earlier he showed that he had much more love for animals than for people, and this difference was really unhealthy. However, he also occasionally demonstrated a pathology of emotions: for example, when his beloved dog burned down in his dacha, he did not even respond to the news about it.
This year Vladimir Putin was congratulated on his birthday by four presidents by telephone, and five by telegram. This is the lowest and most embarrassing result within six years. Even the most seemingly loyal turned their backs: Belarus (!!!), North Korea (!!!!) and Tajikistan (!!) limited themselves to a telegram. Putin's friends are becoming fewer and fewer, the propaganda can no longer keep up with the image of the president as a powerful, masculine man, partly because Putin has long been physically ill — journalists were able to ascertain this from the flights of his attending physicians. This means that old age does not make one better, but only brings one's death closer.
In Russian and world literature death is always drawn as old, decrepit and evil, and old age represents extinction and demise. The decrepit old men, who feel that their days are over, are angry and often ready to take radical steps. It is for this reason that Putin, who is rapidly deteriorating from the madness that is consuming him, started a war on February 24. Actions taken in panic because the Russian army is totally incapacitated on the fronts only prolong and intensify the agony of the regime. And agony is always followed by biological death. So this may very well be Putin's last birthday.
16 years ago, on Putin's 54th birthday, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta, was shot dead in the entryway of her house. The original goal of the investigation was to declare Berezovsky the mastermind behind Politkovskaya's murder. Therefore, the official investigation dragged on: the execution of the crime was being blamed on Akhmed Zakayev, saying that the "despicable West" was preventing him from being questioned as a suspect.
The agencies competed with each other — each wanted to declare itself the first to solve Politkovskaya's murder. For this reason, the killer was missed — he left first the city and then the country — and the wrong people were arrested on murder charges. The killer turned out to be Rustam Makhmudov, but even after being put on the federal wanted list, he was flying around Russia with Lieutenant Colonel Ryaguzov of the FSB, whose agent he was.
But they didn't want to arrest Makhmudov either, precisely because of his connection to the FSB. Besides, it seemed wrong to detain an FSB agent when the law-enforcement agencies themselves had established the Moscow police surveillance of Anna Stepanovna. Makhmudov was only detained in order to silence public opinion.
Gaitukayev, the organizer of the murder, was in touch with Ryaguzov while already in prison, although he was not supposed to have a telephone in places of detention. Incidentally, his telephone was tapped, but at first FSB did not want to give out the recordings, saying that they had been destroyed because “they were not of operational interest”. Then, however, the materials were found — when the process had to be held openly in order to calm down public opinion.
But now, 16 years have passed since the murder: the deadline for bringing the perpetrators to justice has expired. This is exactly what the investigation was trying to achieve, delaying the process as much as possible. There is no need to look for the killers — the murder was ordered and approved at the highest level.
Now it is absolutely clear that, as in the case of many attempts on the lives of politicians, activists and journalists, Vladimir Putin is behind these murders. But what did Anna Politkovskaya do to him?
She covered the Chechen wars, the terrorist attack in Beslan, the terrorist attack on Dubrovka and Kadyrov's political reprisals against his opponents. Her whole life and professional activities were imbued with anti-imperialist rhetoric. In interviews she argued that the poison of chauvinism and imperialism is what poisoned the minds and forced the authorities to start bloody wars. Russia has a monstrous xenophobia; the Chechen wars were started with the rhetoric, "These are savage northern people who must be subdued."
She prevented Putin from carrying out his plans to attack sovereign states. She kept the focus from shifting from the blame of the authorities, pointing out that the authorities were trying to appear to be the only savior of the hostages in Beslan, but in fact they were only killing the victims of the attack, monopolizing the "right to rescue". Politkovskaya showed that the king is naked. Putin personally hated Novaya Gazeta correspondent for this.
The murder of Anna Politkovskaya was the best present that could have been given to Putin on his 54th birthday. And his cynical words about Politkovskaya's life and death only confirm that he is insanely happy about the massacre of his opponent.