Friedman: Putin suffers from an inferiority complex towards America and wants to bite off part of Ukraine

Prominent American writer and journalist Thomas Friedman criticized Russia's attempts to annex parts of its neighbor Ukraine, and launched a violent attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin, describing him as suffering from a great inferiority complex towards the United States that made him always lurk in the world.

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, Friedman said that Putin, a "former agent" of the Russian KGB, refuses to break out of his isolation, and still sees the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ) circles are lurking him everywhere, and they are behind all his opponents.

President for life

He added that Putin is a politician keen to ensure that he wins the Russian elections in 2024 (or rigged them) to become "president for life", as it is for him that he "is either ruling or he dies."

In Friedman's opinion, it was Putin who created the Ukraine crisis.

If the Russian president decides - as the writer says - to "chomp" another part of Ukraine (after annexing the Crimea), and the reason for this is primarily that he thinks of enhancing his chances of staying in power in Russia;

“It is very important to him.”

The writer adds that Putin has concluded that if he wants to become president for life, he must be president of wars for life.

Obsession with the return of the Soviet Union

In his article, the American writer believes that Putin's yearning for power, and the glory and dignity bestowed upon him and his fellow Russians, made them obsessed with the return of the Soviet Union.

The Russian president was not exaggerating when he declared in 2005 that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the twentieth century.

Because Ukraine - and its capital, Kiev - has long played a major role in Russian history, and was a "fortified shield and food basket" for the Soviet Union at the height of its ancient glory, and perhaps because 8 million Russians (out of a total of 43 million) still reside in Ukraine;

Putin claims that it is his duty to reunite Russia and Ukraine.

Putin's urgency to threaten Ukraine

The reason Putin is in such a hurry to threaten Ukraine with invasion is that he realizes that the process of "Ukrainization" under current President Volodymyr Zelensky has accelerated, the Russian language has been taken out of the school curriculum, and Russian television has been expelled from the Ukrainian media sphere.

Then, besides those reasons, there are purely geopolitical ones;

By creating a crisis over Ukraine, President Putin is calling on the West to bring the post-Cold War order to its final resting place.

Putin believes that the post-Cold War world order was imposed on Russia and the late President Yeltsin when Russia was weak, a system that involved not only NATO's incursion into eastern European countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact, but the expansion of NATO's influence Also in the Soviet Empire itself, in regions such as Ukraine and Georgia.

Putin seeks a new order

By massing troops near Ukraine, Putin is telling the West, "Either we negotiate a new post-Cold War order, or I will embark on a post-Cold War confrontation."

Putin's last wish is to see a prosperous Ukraine join the European Union, and its people and economy develop away from a "underperforming authoritarian" Russia.

He also wants Ukraine to fail and the European Union to crack, and for Donald Trump to be president of the United States for life so that its people live in permanent chaos, in the words of Thomas Friedman at the conclusion of his article.