If there is any lasting impression Vladmir Putin has on me, it is his cold, expressionless stare at the cameras. It is an icy, wintery look that betrays nothing.
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With the exception of the interlude between 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev, Putin is effectively the only leader Russia has known since Boris Yeltsin stepped aside in 1999.
Russia had a presidential term limit of two consecutive four-year terms. But Putin coldly had it reviewed to six years after serving for eight years in his first instance. Shifting the goal post, he swapped with Medvedev from 2008-2012.
With cold precision, both men somehow got term limits reviewed to six and Putin returned to run for the new term limit which would effectively have terminated in 2024. But he recently engineered a provision that allows him to be in office till 2036.
In 2020, he signed a bill that grants former Russian presidents and their family members immunity for life. In Putin, Yoweri Museveni, Paul Biya and lately, Alassane Ouattara can feel proud that they’re being emulated by one of the leading nations in the world.
It is a tragedy that the world can’t meet Vladimir Putin with his characteristic cold stare. The same cold stare he has cast through the barrel of a gun at next door Ukraine since he found a way to seize and annex the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 without any challenge.
Now like an African village chief, he is abducting a bride without challenge and with no intention to perform the rites of marriage. The combined forces of NATO and the United States can only muster a UN resolution to ask Chief Putin to stand back. And the chief has only continued to escalate aggression and the number of casualties and refugees is sure to be the next major concern of the UN relief agencies.
Remember the speed and alacrity with which the same power blocs ranged against Saddam Hussein in Operation Desert Storm in August 1990. Even though Russia, Germany and France opposed the manoeuvres towards Operation Desert Fox, a second war in 2003, the US and Britain went ahead to lead an assault, toppling the government of Iraq and leaving a vacuum from which the country has never recovered.
Now Putin is emboldened to stare coldly at the rest of the world from behind nuclear warheads, daring anyone to sneeze and be damned. UN resolutions and condemnations are a waste of time, Putin has Ukraine and the rest of the world in his pocket until further notice.
While Russia is at it and the Allies are lacking a will, the “Rocket Man” of North Korea who has proved a very good student of international truancy is likely to be glancing sideways at South Korea, licking his lips, and jotting down strategies in his notepad.
It should matter to historians that North Korea has voted against the UN resolution condemning Putin. China abstained. Xi Jinping is silently indulging in his own mischief and bullying. And it is in his enlightened self-interest to mind his business.
Poor Ukraine! It will have to take the blows from a big bully surrounded by sympathetic bullies who are lacking the balls to stand up to this relentless aggressor. As unconscionable as it seems however, perhaps this restraint might be the only thing standing between the world and another global catastrophe.
This needless war has upset the fortunes of many African and other nationals living in Ukraine. For many years now, Nigerian students have found a hub for medical studies in Ukraine. Many who have studied and returned are pursuing brilliant careers in the private and public health sectors.
Nigeria reportedly has the highest population of students in Ukraine next to India. And the reasons are obvious. Tuition for international students are reasonably affordable. Ukraine is one of the most cost-effective educational destinations in Europe, plus Nigerian students don’t have to worry about endless courses punctuated by ASUU strikes.
It’s a combination of all these positives that our country needs to learn from to keep our own within our bothers. University students are right now at home as a result of another strike by teachers. As I write, their counterparts who were counting their luck in eastern Europe will soon be joining them as refugees fleeing a needless war. No thanks to cold Putin.
The question again: Who can stop Putin? For now, nobody. You might just as well say no Jupiter. The irrational and shifty Donald Trump might have been a weighty factor but he is effectively off the stage.
The world has changed. It’s no longer a situation of the allies storming Germany from the west, and Russia storming from the east to overrun Berlin. So Putin knows he is holding up everyone by their balls and might as well decide to squeeze.
Between 1939 and 1945, there was no Israel, India, Pakistan, China and North Korea with nuclear arsenals. But there were inspiring leaders and philosopher kings like Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Charles de Gaulle and many others who fought the war kinetically against Germany, and diplomatically amongst themselves.
Hitler, the very inspirational German Chancellor who’s territorial and racist ambitions started it all has gone into the history books as a persona non grata, a murderous villain who threw the world into confusion. But even after exterminating six million Jews in gas chambers through mass murder, Hitler’s eyes (in pictures) are not nearly as cold as Putin’s.
If, as it is speculated, Putin’s ambition is to restore Russia as the former Soviet Empire to its superpower status, then the question in our minds should be: after Ukraine, who/where next? It also means Eastern Europe is in for a night of horrors, because Alexander The Great is out for conquest. And damn it, he is got a cache of weapons to drive it – and others with similar cache of weapons, are afraid of mutually assured destruction.
Does the global notoriety and ignominy with which the Fuhrer is regarded mean anything to the Russians and their president? But then who listens to who? It is obvious that as the Germans had to listen to and follow Hitler – whether they liked it or not, so do the Russians have to put up with Putin, whatever be the case. Maybe history is about to be repeated.