“Putin has changed.”
This is what Russian observers in the West allied up after Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of last month (local time).
Putin has been treating international relations like a cunning and cold-hearted chess player, but it was unexpected that he actually caused such a reckless war.
In protests around the world condemning Putin, many images accusing him of being a 'Putler' appeared.
It is compared to Hitler, who, caught in a megalomaniac view of history, started a war of aggression and killed many people.
A combination of 'Adolf Hitler' and 'Vladimir Putin' is sometimes called 'Vladolf Putler'.
"Tell me straight!!"... The supreme authority who broadcasts shouts on TV
The Russian military and intelligence agencies also have an elite of experts.
They did not know that the war for an all-out invasion of Ukraine was reckless.
But why couldn't he stop Putin?
There is a scene that shows why.
Look at the picture below.
On February 21, three days before Russian troops crossed the border with Ukraine on Putin's order.
Putin held a National Security Council meeting at the Kremlin.
He was the place to announce the cause of the invasion.
Putin is seated on one side of a large conference hall, and ministers and aides are sitting on the other side a long way away.
When Putin is called, one by one, they are called to the front of the microphone and have a question and answer with Putin.
It was Sergei Narshkin's turn to stand in front of the microphone and give his opinion.
Narshkin is a high-ranking person who has served Putin between the intelligence service, the administration and parliament, and was appointed by Putin as the 'head of Russian spies' in 2016.
He has these conversations between him and Putin.
I don't know if I can call it a 'conversation'.
Narshkin: …
.We could give our partners one last chance.
Press Kiiu to accept the compromise...
.
In the worst case, you will have to make the decisions we are discussing today.
Putin: (with a displeased expression) What do you mean by 'worst case'?
Shall we start negotiating now?
Narshkin: (embarrassed) No, I…
I am…
.
Putin: Tell me, tell me!
Speak clearly!
Narshkin: I will support the proposal to recognize independence (of the Donetsk-Luhansk People's Republic of Eastern Ukraine).
Putin: 'I will support' or 'I am supporting'?
Speak straight!
Narshkin: (Looking at him, frozen) I'm supporting him.
The conversation was also shown on video by the Kremlin.
After capturing it, I tried to weave it into a series of scenes.
In the video, Putin explicitly expresses his displeasure and contempt towards Narshkin.
Narshkin, who is at the top of the power elite, is restless like a student who is beaten by a teacher for wrong answers.
After the execution of his uncle Jang Song-thaek in North Korea, it is reminiscent of a scene in which Kim Jong-un gathers military and party officials to have a meeting.
The fact that such a video of a high-ranking official is released as it is also shows the nature of the relationship between the supreme power and the staff.
The public image of Putin's exercise of power in Russia has been going on for quite some time.
A typical example is the Picalyovo incident in June 2009.
Putin was exercising his real power as prime minister with his then-aide Medvedev installed as president, and he made a blitz visit to Picalyovo, a small city with a population of 20,000.
In that village, there was a cement-aluminum factory run by a conglomerate with total assets of over 35 trillion won.
Due to the economic hardship, the factory was closed and wages were delayed for three months, causing the residents to protest after suffering hardships.
Putin came to the scene to solve the situation.
Oleg Deripaska, the conglomerate in question, was called to the meeting, and a TV camera was waiting.
Putin raises Deripaska, scolds cockroaches, and throws a ballpoint pen on the desk, shouting to sign a memorandum to pay arrears immediately.
Deripasca stands hunched over and signs the memorandum.
This scene was broadcast nationwide, and Putin became a hero for ordinary people who were suffering from economic difficulties.
In fact, what the conglomerate did can be said to be cheap even if you hear the swear word that it is like a cockroach.
There are many cases like this in other countries as well.
However, it is not common to solve problems this way.
In a country governed by laws and systems, these vicious business owners are investigated, handed over to trial, punished in court, and necessary compensation is paid.
In Russia, the meeting was prepared in advance, and the conglomerate in question was called and made a colonel, a memorandum of agreement was prepared in advance, a state TV camera was prepared, and the appearance of a shouting Putin was produced.
By showing the tsar (emperor) who embodies justice, the people praised the tsar.
More than 10 years have passed since then, and Putin's power has grown stronger.
It is a structure in which it is difficult for anyone to remain able to say to Putin, "I think a war to invade Ukraine is unreasonable."
Intangible power expressed in tangible distance, and Corona 19
Power itself is invisible, but it is also expressed in a visible form.
For example, through seating arrangements in conference halls.
On February 28 (local time), a meeting with senior management of a state-owned energy company was held at Putin's official residence.
It was an opportunity to discuss countermeasures against the economic sanctions expected by the West after the invasion of Ukraine.
In an arrangement like the one pictured below, what could the summoned experts say to Putin, the state supreme authority?
This, even comical, appearance has been exacerbated by Putin's hypersensitivity to COVID-19.
It is known that anyone meeting Putin will have to go through a tunnel where disinfectant is sprayed after being quarantined at a hotel for two weeks, unless there are very special circumstances.
The New York Times, citing US intelligence officials, reported that Putin, who is extremely wary of the coronavirus, had mostly videoconferences or phone calls with his cabinet or aides over the past two years.
Physical distance affects the quality of communication.
The same is true in personal relationships.
If you sit close enough to whisper, you can have a more open conversation.
The further away you are, the more difficult it will be to communicate intimately and honestly.
For Putin, who has been head of state for over 20 years, it would have been impossible for his aides to dissent and engage in productive discussions.
US intelligence agencies believe Putin developed paranoid as he grew up in the KGB, the New York Times reported.
He said that he did all sorts of tricks and power struggles, sometimes executing and sometimes observing.
The absence of face-to-face contact and prolonged isolation due to COVID-19 made the problem worse.
US intelligence officials have explained that Putin's paranoid tendencies are reinforced when he is self-reliant.
As a result, he predicted that he could order indiscriminate bombing or nuclear threats against Ukrainian civilians.
Such a vision is becoming a reality.
However, among the recent photos of Putin meeting people, there is an unexpected side.
Is Putin a 'benevolent' macho?
Before International Women's Day on the 5th (local time), they visited the flight attendant school of the state-run Aeroflot Airlines and took a picture with the women.
It is quite different from the previously introduced security or economic meeting where participants were placed so far away that they could not hear their voices.
It seems contradictory at first glance, but in reality it is not.
This is because the image that Putin pursues is 'an incomparable absolute power' and 'benevolent forage' at the same time.
It's like two sides of a coin.
Putin likes to brag about her strong masculinity—even if it seems a bit anachronistic.
She said Putin, who was born in 1952, with her shirt off and torso muscular for her age, often promotes sports or riding horses.
The leader Putin seeks is that of a male lion who leads the pack.
The strongest male lion in the pack crushes its rivals and protects its lioness and cubs from external attacks such as hyenas.
In preparing for the invasion of Ukraine, Putin claimed to be the protector of the Russian population of Donetsk and Luhansk.
It is said that 'special military action' is being carried out to protect them from the risk of massacre by the neo-Nazis in Ukraine (Putin calls the anti-Russian pro-Western leadership such as Zelensky).
However, there is also a cruel drama unfolding in the meadows of the lions.
The chief male bites and kills offspring that have inherited the genes of other males.
The cruelty of macho that trembles with a sense of betrayal
Marwan Vishara, a political analyst for the English version of Al Jazeera, recently wrote a column analyzing the situation in Ukraine using Putin's macho psychology.
According to him, Putin's broadcast speech just before the invasion of Ukraine expressed anger, bitterness and a strong sense of betrayal.
Beyond the disappointment and jealousy of Ukraine, which is constantly approaching the West, the feeling that only betrayal is unforgivable is felt.
'Ukraine is a country that Russia gave money and land to make, so you're going to be embraced by Russia's enemies?
If you can't be mine, you can't be anyone's!'
This is Putin's intent reflected in his eyes.
This is a mechanism similar to the psychology of a violent husband who tries to kill his wife because she is having an affair with another man.
In this type of incident, the blindfolded husband becomes as brutal as a male lion slaughtering his cubs.
Faced with strong resistance from the Ukrainian people, the prospect that Putin could use chemical or nuclear weapons following indiscriminate bombing of civilians is also due to this psychological reason.
Peter Dixon of the Atlantic Council, an American think tank that deals with international affairs, said that Putin's ambition is not to rebuild the Soviet Union as a federation that shares an ideology, but to rebuild a nationalistic 'Russian Empire', and in the process genocide (a specific race or ethnicity) is concerned that the annihilation of
He also pays attention to Putin's 'betrayal' towards Ukraine.
Putin's anger at the fact that he has been struggling for years to leave the Russian Empire and be embraced by Western European-Atlantic powers is a kind of betrayal.
What Putin learned from Gaddafi's disastrous end
There is also a view that explains the fall of Gaddafi, who was the ruler of Libya with an iron fist, and the psychology of Putin.
Kim Gattas's contribution to The Atlantic on March 6 is such a case.
Although Gaddafi was originally an anti-American dictator, he declared an end to anti-American policies in 2003 and decided to voluntarily dismantle all weapons of mass destruction.
However, in 2011, the Arab pro-democracy protests broke out.
As the Arab Spring spread to Libya, Gaddafi declared civil war against the people.
Accordingly, the United States and European countries pushed for a UN resolution for military intervention.
At that time, Putin had handed over his presidency to his close associate, Medvedev, and stepped down as prime minister, but Medvedev was persuaded by the West and did not criticize the resolution, and NATO forces eventually intervened in Libya.
Gaddafi was chased away by NATO forces and hid in a sewer, but was captured by rebels and met a tragic end.
Putin said he watched the video of Gaddafi being captured and killed over and over again.
CIA Director William Burns' book The Back Channel.
According to Kim Gattas, Putin learned many lessons from Gaddafi's end.
He said that democratization was dangerous for those in power, that Gaddafi liked best when he was a loner and tyrant who was insulted by the international community.
Putin returned to the Kremlin as president in 2012.
He then sets out to block the western forces seeking to overthrow the al-Assad regime in Syria.
He fully intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015 and protects the Assad dictatorship by any means, including indiscriminate bombardment of civilians and the use of chemical weapons.
In the process, Kim Gattas analyzes that Putin realized that the chain of democratic revolution could be broken by Russian armed intervention, and in that case, the Western world would not seriously stop his attempts with force.
It was through Syria that Putin truly 'growth', and he argues that the extent to which he will push ahead with the Ukraine war can be seen by looking at the war crimes he has committed in Syria.
Hitler and Putin... Violence of paranoid nationalism
Putin has many similarities with Hitler in that he gained confidence through small-scale armed threats and then gradually scaled up to create a huge war tragedy.
It is similar in that he invaded neighboring countries by force while obsessed with the hybrid ideology of the victim-hype-hypeparadoxical view of history and geopolitics.
Hitler thought that, in order for the Germanic peoples to live well, it was the history and order of human development for Germany to occupy a larger land in Central Europe.
Nevertheless, France and Britain, in cooperation with Jewish capital, forced Germany to humiliate Germany through the Treaty of Versailles (a treaty ending the First World War), and was caught up in the idea that it should be repaid by force, which started World War II.
Putin is imbued with the idea of reconstructing a grand Rus empire by gathering the power of the Eurasian continent against Western European-Atlantic forces.
To him, the United States and NATO are the ultimate enemies that brought the disgrace of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Russia is the victim.
However, in reality, it is impossible to annihilate the Western European-Atlantic powers on the continent, and instead, Putin's geopolitical thinking is that Russia's front yard will be cleaned and placed as a buffer zone.
The common denominator is that not only the casualties of war partners, but also the lives of their own soldiers are not wasted.
Hitler did not allow the retreat of the soldiers who had invaded the Soviet Union in winter and were frozen to death, starved to death, and faced with a Soviet counterattack.
He yelled at the military officers that they had to retreat and reorganize and advance again, saying that he had lost his mind, and frantically insisted on 'keep the current position'.
As a result, the German army was irreparably destroyed.
In 2022, Russian troops were sent to Ukraine without adequate supplies.
The young conscripts who got into a vehicle thinking they were going to training, and then were dropped off in Ukraine, deserted because they were hungry.
Many Russian soldiers either leave their tanks in mud and run away or are killed by the resistance's hand-held missiles.
Putin doesn't care.
They are changing personnel and equipment to see who raises both hands first.
Putin's plight differs from Hitler's in that he has a numerical advantage over the targets of the invasion and does not have to fight against powerful allies.
Hitler was eventually stopped by the US participation in the war and a counterattack by the Soviets.
Several assassination attempts were made within the German army, but in the end, Hitler committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945, when the Soviets were approaching their noses.
In the case of Putin, unlike Hitler, there is no strong enemy who pushes the main base by defeating his army.
The United States and Europe have decided not to provide the fighter that Ukraine so desperately wants.
I'm sorry for Ukraine, but it is clear that I will not go directly to war.
So, what to expect is that there will be a movement to remove Putin from within Russia, but can it be?
Putin, what will the end be?
Interestingly, Putin himself once spoke to the American media about the matter.
He was interviewed in a documentary aired about him by CBS in the US in 2017, in which he also spoke about his assassination threat.
QUESTIONER: You said you got over five assassination crises?
But it's less than Cuba's Castro.
He said 50.
Putin: Oh, we talked about that in our meeting with Castro.
he asked
"How do you know I'm still alive?"
When I asked how it was, he replied:
"Because I take care of my own safety concerns myself."
I do my job, and the bodyguard does their job.
He still did a pretty good job.
(That means he's alive)
Putin: You know there's a saying in Russia like this?
'Whoever is to be hanged does not drown.'
Questioner: Oh...
haha…
Do you know what your fate will be?
Putin: Only God knows our fate.
you or me
Questioner: ...I just want to die quietly in bed.
Putin: Death comes to everyone, someday.
The question is, what will you achieve while living in this fleeting world until then, and whether you will enjoy your life properly?
The conversation does not continue and moves on to another topic.
Is Putin the fate of 'those who will be hanged' or the fate of 'those who drown'?
Only God knows the answer, and it seems that there is not enough power to stop him from accomplishing what he is trying to accomplish before he dies.
(Composition: Senior Correspondent Lee Hyun-sik/D Contents Producer, Content Design: Jisoo Ok)