Putin Hasn't Lost Touch With 'His' Reality. Welcome To KGB Russia
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On Christmas Day 1979, U.S. intelligence detected waves of Soviet
military aircraft flying into Afghanistan. The next day, President
Carter received a memo from his national security advisor outlining
possible responses to a wide scale Soviet intervention. On the night of
December 27, Soviet KGB troops dressed in Afghan uniforms attacked the
palace where Afghan President Amin was hiding, executed him, and
occupied strategic locations throughout Kabul in a forty-five minute
operation. A radio broadcast, purporting to be from Kabul but actually
coming from Uzbekistan, announced that Amin’s execution had been ordered
by the Afghan Peoples’ Revolutionary Council and that a new government
headed by Soviet-loyalist Babrak Karmal had been formed. Soviet ground
forces and paratroopers invaded the same evening, and, within five
weeks, five divisions were in place. So began the Soviet Afghanistan
war. (Paul Gregory, The Soviet Quagmire).
Vladimir Putin, then an ambitious 27-year-old foreign intelligence officer of the KGB, cut his teeth on the KGB Afghanistan invasion. In his fourteen years as Russia’s supreme leader, he has used the classic KGB dirty tricks of provokatsia, desinformatsia, and maskirovka to bomb Chechnya back to the stone age while installing a puppet regime, intimidate and keep in line Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, Central Asia, and any independence-minded flash points of the former Soviet empire. Ukraine, his latest victim, is, in Putin’s world, the beneficiary of munificent Russian humanitarian assistance necessitated by manipulation of the sinister Americans applying techniques on the Ukrainian people perfected on lab rats.
Putin’s unchanging KGB script dates back to Stalin’s annihilations and deportation of whole nationalities in the 1930s and State Security head, Ivan Serov’s, razing of Eastern Europe. The model remains the same: Armored trucks and troops arrive out of nowhere, invited by some shadowy local organization. They take control of strategic facilities and communications, and announce a new regime elected by popular acclaim and cheered on by grateful residents organized by KGB operatives.
The world clearly understands that Russian forces have launched an illegitimate and disguised invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of international treaties bearing their own signature. They have installed a puppet government, and have gone about securing control of foreign territory, the limits of which remain to be determined.
After level-headed Angela Merkel of Germany talked by phone with Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine crisis, she came away reporting that he had lost touch with reality and was living in another world. Putin’s saber-rattling press conference was another shocking introduction to Putin’s parallel universe, in which black is white, down is up, and the sun rises at night.
In Putin’s world, all demonstrators in Moscow streets are paid agents
of Hillary Clinton, and now John Kerry, a student deserves two and a
half years in jail for injuring a heavily-armored riot policeman with a
lemon, the tiny Georgian army attacked Russian forces without
prvocation as rabid Georgians killed and maimed the embattled citizens
of Abkhazia, the Maidan demonstrators are Nazis and skinheads who burn
innocent bystanders alive, Yanukovich’s Berkut riot police bravely hold
their ground as anti-Semitic snipers dropped them one by one, Yanukovich
is the legitimate president although Ukraine has no president, the new
Crimean governor (who last commanded a whopping 4% of the vote) has the
unanimous support of the pople, Desperate Russian-speaking Ukrainians
turned to Russia for humanitarian support, and the Russian uniforms worn
by Crimean “local self defense forces” were purchased in second-hand
stores.
Chancellor Merkel should not be surprised by Putin’s lack of touch with reality, or that he is living “in another world.” After all, she grew up behind a wall, erected by Putin’s KGB heroes for the express purpose of keeping out “enemy provocateurs,” not to keep the people from fleeing. The likes of John Kerry and Barack Obama, however, face Putin’s KGB alternative universe for the first time. Let’s hope they come to understand Putin’s uncivilized provokatsia, desinformatisia, maskirovka, and the tried-and-true “big lie” as quickly as possible.
Know thy enemy. If he is in the gutter, you’ll need to get your hands dirty.
The author serves on the International Academic Advisory Board of the Kiev School of Economics. The views are those of the author and not the school.
The author’s latest book is Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives.
Vladimir Putin, then an ambitious 27-year-old foreign intelligence officer of the KGB, cut his teeth on the KGB Afghanistan invasion. In his fourteen years as Russia’s supreme leader, he has used the classic KGB dirty tricks of provokatsia, desinformatsia, and maskirovka to bomb Chechnya back to the stone age while installing a puppet regime, intimidate and keep in line Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, Central Asia, and any independence-minded flash points of the former Soviet empire. Ukraine, his latest victim, is, in Putin’s world, the beneficiary of munificent Russian humanitarian assistance necessitated by manipulation of the sinister Americans applying techniques on the Ukrainian people perfected on lab rats.
Putin’s unchanging KGB script dates back to Stalin’s annihilations and deportation of whole nationalities in the 1930s and State Security head, Ivan Serov’s, razing of Eastern Europe. The model remains the same: Armored trucks and troops arrive out of nowhere, invited by some shadowy local organization. They take control of strategic facilities and communications, and announce a new regime elected by popular acclaim and cheered on by grateful residents organized by KGB operatives.
The world clearly understands that Russian forces have launched an illegitimate and disguised invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of international treaties bearing their own signature. They have installed a puppet government, and have gone about securing control of foreign territory, the limits of which remain to be determined.
After level-headed Angela Merkel of Germany talked by phone with Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine crisis, she came away reporting that he had lost touch with reality and was living in another world. Putin’s saber-rattling press conference was another shocking introduction to Putin’s parallel universe, in which black is white, down is up, and the sun rises at night.
Vladimir Putin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Chancellor Merkel should not be surprised by Putin’s lack of touch with reality, or that he is living “in another world.” After all, she grew up behind a wall, erected by Putin’s KGB heroes for the express purpose of keeping out “enemy provocateurs,” not to keep the people from fleeing. The likes of John Kerry and Barack Obama, however, face Putin’s KGB alternative universe for the first time. Let’s hope they come to understand Putin’s uncivilized provokatsia, desinformatisia, maskirovka, and the tried-and-true “big lie” as quickly as possible.
Know thy enemy. If he is in the gutter, you’ll need to get your hands dirty.
The author serves on the International Academic Advisory Board of the Kiev School of Economics. The views are those of the author and not the school.
The author’s latest book is Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives.
