Adolf Hitler is long dead. But his blasted memory continues to haunt nervy humanity, still stunned by his all-round evil.
Which is why Russia’s Vladimir Putin, playing Hitler again, should worry everyone — even if you’re assailed too, by the mealy-mouthed hypocrisy of the Western powers.
Around February 21 — three days before the Russian invasion — “Why Ukraine?”, by one Thomas Gentry, started making the rounds on WhatsApp and sundry social media, chalking the proverbial 1, 001 reasons Russia covets Ukraine: greed!
But on greed, can the West throw the first stone? Might the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), both now playing crusading angels against Satan Putin, be ogling Ukraine’s stupendous wealth too?
On naked greed, neither the West nor Russia are angels!
Still, that shouldn’t blunt the present Putin peril — clearly not lost on the 168-strong Body of Nobelists, including Nigeria’s Prof. Wole Soyinka, who just threw Vladimir Putin under the bus, for his aggression against Ukraine, citing a chilling Hitler parallel.
In 1939, Nazi Germany blasted through Poland with an overwhelming blitzkrieg — Warsaw saw war!
In 1941, the Nazis pummelled the defunct Soviet Union, of which Russia was the prime state, the Nobelists just reminded everyone.
Yet in 2022, Russia is applying similar strong-arm tactics, and birthing rogue territories, because it feels it could corral Ukraine with raw might?
So Russia, bullied by Nazi Germany, could itself bully Ukraine — which, by the way, co-bore the brunt of that Nazi lunacy?
But the Nazi invasion of the defunct Soviet Union — how did it end, after its “initial gra-gra”, to borrow that picturesque pidgin?
Is that the catastrophe Putin is setting up to snare his beloved Russia, as Hitler did his Nazi Germany, by this Ukraine campaign?
Herr Hitler (sorry, Putin) has gone mad again!
Still, the Putin peril didn’t start with the unfolding Ukraine debacle, with all its avoidable human suffering and misery.
Rather, it started with Putin’s likely diseased thinking, as gauged from a rambling, classless broadcast, teeming with weird history, base insults and vulgar abuse. That broadcast ordered the February 24 invasion.
Putin not only echoed Hitler with mind unhinged, he also beamed, like a blinding flash, the Karl Marx bit of history repeating itself as tragedy and farce.
In his farce, Putin railed at the “neo-Nazis” of Ukraine, dismissed the Zelenskyy order as drug-crazed, ultra-right monsters bent on cleaning out Ukraine’s ethnic Russians.
But to that Nazi sabre-rattling, history chuckles. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, is Jewish! A neo-Nazi Jew? But that irony appears totally lost on Putin!
Putin also swore to get Zelenskyy and co first, before they got his beloved Russian minority folks, thus projecting a fearsome Russian ultra-nationalism — not unlike Hitler’s reckless touting of the Aryan superior race theory.
To walk his talk, Hitler — sorry, Putin — carved out two new states, bastion of ethnic Russian separatists, out of Ukraine’s troubled Donbas!
Hitler, even at the apex of his power fancy, never deluded himself that his victims would roll over; and hail him as a liberationist hero.
Yet, here we were: Putin telling his would-be vanquished in Ukraine to not only roll over but also take up arms and overthrow their President, Zelenskyy, who only in 2019 harvested 73 per cent of the vote. What farce! What outlawry!
But while Russia’s bombs pound Ukraine’s prime cities and bloody its ill-fated people, a no less explosive Vladimir-Volodymyr tangle blazes. It’s a classic David versus Goliath stuff!
For starters, Top dog Vladimir versus Underdog Volodymyr. You could feel that in how the West-dominated global media frame the Ukraine cause — and rightly so.
Then, Vladimir the killer, locked with Volodymyr the suicidal.
Vladimir, dour but formidable power brawler faces off Volodymyr, ace actor and nimble mobilizer, rallying his people, out-gunned and out-bombed, to resist to the last man!
But with mere words, Volodymyr seems to have fared better than Vladimir, with fierce bombs. Despite Russia’s tanks, Ukraine’s will remains strong.
CNN has shown stunning live pictures that should truly worry Putin. Russia just captured a city. Yet, its band of unarmed denizens told the Russian troops to go to hell.
Halyna Yanchenko, young woman and Ukraine member of parliament, swore to CNN Russia would prevail only if it killed every Ukrainian.
Another CNN live picture spotted panicky Russian troops shooting at unarmed locals to break up an anti-Russia protest, hitting a protester in the leg.
Though bloodied, these folks aren’t exactly rolling over — not the exact picture in Putin’s head, as he ordered his short-and-sweet campaign! This mess could linger for much longer!
Yet, Putin couldn’t even tell his people he is waging a brutal war. The official lingo is “special military operation”; and independent media, like Radio Echo and TV Rain, that balked at that euphemism have shut down, threatened with a new law prescribing 15 years’ jail for “fake news” (read grim truth) on the Ukraine War.
How long will the Ukraine resistance, much romanticized in the western media, last? As long as it takes to spread Russia thin and make Putin blink?
Or would Volodymyr Zelenskyy and co become the 2022 AD version of the 480 BC King Leonidas of Sparta and his out-matched 300 warriors, who fought and bravely perished at Thermopylae but glowed in the heart of antiquity, as much as their slayers perished from human memory? Gripping stuff!
But how long too, will Russia survive the economic siege the America-led western powers are laying to it: first, to cut off its cash; and then, cripple its fearsome arsenal — a strategic ploy that holds no comfort for Russia?
Putin’s latest growl at these sanctions (which have degraded the Ruble and made global pariahs of innocent Russians) is to warn the West that Russia might deem sanctions as acts of war. That followed his earlier threat to put his nuclear arsenal on high alert — to unleash Russia’s nukes on whoever dared to fight on Ukraine’s side?
Hitler all over again, insane threats and all?
Yet, America and co should also be very careful to not overplay the sanctions. Just apply enough for harried Putin to abandon his gambit. The League of Nations collapsed — and World War 2 came — because the price of peace for defeated Germany, with harsh reparations from the Treaty of Versailles, was just too stiff.
That fuelled the rise of Hitler, following the collapse of the Weimar Republic. A trapped Putin, with Russia’s nukes, could well go that path!
Still, might can never be right. So, the globe has a moral duty to save Ukraine from Russia’s aggression — fired more by Putin’s dark grudges than by Russia’s interests.