Putin: dying by killing?
The worst news for Europeans is that Putin will stay in power for another six years: until 2030, he will remain the bane of NATO and the European Union (EU). A cornered Putin is even more dangerous because his decisions are increasingly risky, reckless and ruthless.
The Russian dictator has become the ultimate nemesis, a messianic blend of Lenin and Stalin, but with tsarist imperialist airs. He bears the stamp of power and to keep it he kills himself.
No critic is spared, neither inside Russia nor outside its borders. The hunt for his enemies or for people who have made him uncomfortable, be they journalists, activists, businessmen or oligarchs, has crossed borders, whether they are poisoning those who have gone into exile in the UK or finding massacred corpses with their families and in such bizarre situations.
The Soviet dictator, Yossif Stalin, had Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico, in Coyoacan. He could not stand the fact that this journalist and essayist, founder of the Red Army, competed with him in popularity; their relationship deteriorated to such a degree that Stalin accused him of anti-Soviet activities and he was exiled. Trotsky went to Mexico where he began a series of activities in which he questioned Stalin and accused him of serious repressions against the population and a cruel method of torture in prison.
Trotsky suffered several attempts on his life before he was assassinated on 21 August 1940 by the Spanish communist Ramon Mercader, hired by Kotov, an agent of the Soviet NKVD.
Tsar Putin is just following the old tactics of his worst predecessors. He has no point of balance in his personality and cannot be more unsettling because he is capable of anything... he has no limits, no morals. He is not clearly distinguishing between right and wrong, nor is he tempting his heart, he has fully developed his psychopathic personality.
He has started to hunt his enemies using key dates as an act of revenge, but he also does it to frighten Russians and Europeans. For the psychopath wields his power by playing on the weaknesses, fears and vulnerabilities of others.
He has toyed with the idea of a tactical nuclear bomb and a return to Soviet territorial grandeur that has sent shivers down the spines of small countries like Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Moldova. As Finland begins to reinforce its border with the Russian Federation and in Poland, the army lives in fear of invasion at dawn. Putin is playing on these fears.
And no wonder. I don't think the Kremlin will ever use a nuclear bomb because it knows that, with nuclear weapons, whoever fires first will not win, but lose. It is not the same scenario as with the nuclear bombs of 6 and 9 August 1945 dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The United States was the only country with such technology at the time, so there was no balance of power. Today, there are nine countries with nuclear bomb arsenals: in addition to the US, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and India.
On the subject
What I do believe is in Putin's plans is to invade Eastern Europe. He is obsessed with regaining not only the territories that were part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), but also the Soviet area of influence, known as the Eastern Bloc or Soviet Bloc.
He will not settle for Ukraine. Putin is ready for a big war into which he will throw his citizens and into which he will throw NATO; a Transatlantic Alliance that, if Trump returns to power, will not have the protective umbrella of the United States and that will be the trigger for the Russian invasion.
These days we have seen the consequences of the lack of military and economic aid that the United States has been providing to Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion: they have lost Avdivivka, a battle in which the Ukrainian military had been engaged for more than eight months, repelling the Russian army and the separatist forces of the Donbas. They only just lost the position for lack of weapons and money to buy more ammunition... more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers are trapped, many of them wounded.
Putin knows that in Ukraine he only has to hold out a little longer, wait for Trump's arrival in the White House, to continue with his plan: kill Zelensky and carry out the final assault on Kiev; surrender Ukraine and put in place a puppet government. And then he will invade the smaller European countries that he has already been pointing to as traitors of the Soviet past.
The Kremlin has just put Estonia's prime minister, Kaja Kallas, under arrest, but also added high-ranking officials and MPs from Latvia and Lithuania to the list. Putin openly accuses them of disavowing their Soviet past and destroying the Soviet monuments that remain in these territories, which have been independent republics since 1991. These are countries that are also within the European Union.
For Europe, terrible years lie ahead as long as Putin remains in power in Russia. He is frankly obsessed with restoring the old zone of political, military and economic influence and we have no doubt that he is capable of anything. The recent death in bizarre conditions of Alexei Navalny, one month before the Russian elections, is nothing more than a message to frighten all those who would try anything against the Russian dictator. As US President Joe Biden said a few months ago, "he is a murderer". A murderer who is certainly capable of dying, killing.