EDITORIAL: Vladimir Putin, Fraud and Liar

EDITORIAL

Vladimir Putin, Fraud and Liar

Back in June, when the story broke about a massive web of pathetically ragtag Russian spies having been uncovered whilst seeking to insinuate themselves at the most intimate levels of American life, the Russian government denied any spies had been caught.  Former KGB spymaster Vladimir Putin went further. He didn’t just deny there were spies, he accused U.S. law enforcement authorities of losing control, going on a frenzy and locking up innocent people.

He’d know, of course.  Nobody knows better than Putin how to lock up (or simply murder) innocent people.

But it has turned out, of course, that Putin was lying.  Shamelessly, after the spies were returned to Russia, Putin met and sang patriotic songs with them.  This only confirmed the fact, now common public knowledge, that Putin didn’t merely know about these spies, he sent them to America himself.  It was his spy program that imploded spectacularly before a slack-jawed world, and his bitter childish and ridiculous neo-Soviet recriminations in the aftermath prove this better than any other kind of evidence ever could.

Everywhere you look these days, Putin’s failure is evident.  The Caucasus region is exploding in renewed violence.  The economy has collapsed, the stock market losing a shocking 80% of its value in the course of a few weeks.  Russia stands without allies, and is even feuding furiously with the likes of Belarus.  And despite spending untold billions on renewal of the cold war with the United States, Putin’s ridiculous neo-Soviet schemes are collapsing all around him like a house of cards.

From day one, this has been what we’ve predicted for Russia.  Choosing a man totally without qualifications or credentials like Vladimir Putin to run a large complex country like Russia in the midst of a competitive global economy was always an act of folly, and now these chickens have come home to roost.

Even if Putin’s policies had succeeded, of course, the cost would still have been far too high. That’s because we haven’t yet mentioned the horrific crackdown on civil society that has pervaded Russia from Putin’s first days in power.  The minute he assumed the mantle of command at the KGB, opposition leader Galina Starovoitova was assassinated and Putin announced himself as the second coming of Stalin. Since then, many more opposition leaders have been brutally murdered or jailed on spurious charges or driven out of the country, and Putin has seized a choke hold on the regime.  He directly appoints governors, rigs “elections,” and populates the Kremlin with an army of KGB cohorts.  He liquidates opposition parties and independent media, and revives images of Stalin and Soviet power.

There were many who argued that Russia could “never go back” to the dark Soviet past.  They were liars too, as much as Putin himself, and we now see their lies exposed for all to see.

And let’s be clear:  There’s only one reason why Putin would openly meet with these spies and sing songs with them, and that reason is bilious hatred of America.  Putin has been raised and trained to hate America, and even now when the US has a cowardly, appeasing president like Barack Obama Putin simply cannot restrain his hatred.  His meeting with the spies, proudly and openly, sends just one message:  “I hate America, and I’ll do all I can as long as I can to destroy America.”

It’s time Mr. Obama started listening.