Putin: In his own mind?

John Hanno, tarbabys.com – March 5, 2022

Diabolical International War Criminal Vladimir Putin

The world is in shock. The people of Ukraine and Russia are in shock. A madman with his fingers on the nuclear buttons, and hell bent on Russian world domination, has unleashed almost 200,000 reluctant and low-paid soldiers, including thousands of conscripted young men who seem as dazed and shocked as the rest of us, for undoubtedly the biggest political and military bungle in Russia’s history. Ukraine and it’s courageous Democratic populace are squarely in the cross-hairs of Putin’s needless conflagration.

How can any nation’s responsible leader wake up in the morning and decide he must make life harder and incredibly more dangerous for 44 million innocent human beings. That what ever his personal lifelong ambitions are for his country, its requires killing, terrorizing and maiming 10’s of thousands of men, women and children, and forcing millions of terrified folks to flee their homeland. The only word I can think of is diabolical, someone created by the movie industry in order to sell tickets, break box office records and scare the bejesus out of theater goers.

But this isn’t a cinematic farce, it’s real life and death for the Democratic leaning citizens of Ukraine, forced to cower in underground shelters to avoid indiscriminate missiles and rockets raining down on civilian targets.

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A group of women and a boy walk to the train station as they try to leave Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 2.

There are no super heroes for this epic, signed up to vanquish the evil doer, only countless daily stories from the war fronts, about 100’s of thousands of ordinary people doing heroic things to protect their families, their cities, their country and their fledging Democracy.

Vitaly Skakun Volodymyrovych made the ultimate sacrifice to halt the advancing Russians.

Vitaly Skakun Volodymyrovych is hailed a hero and remembered as a symbol of the resistance, after sacrificing his life to blow up the Henichesky Bridge. Russian tanks were attempting to use the bridge to advance in Crimea. The bridge was mined, but a Russian column was advancing and there was no time to detonate it remotely. Skakun Volodymyrovych radioed his unit and told them he would do it manually, saying goodbye.

The Kherson region of Crimea, now over taken by the advancing hoards, was one of the first met with enemy troops, the military said. When it seemed like stopping the advancing column of tanks would be impossible, the troops made the decision to blow up the bridge.

“The bridge was mined, but he didn’t manage to get away from there,” a statement from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “According to his brothers in arms, Vitaly got in touch and said he was going to blow up the bridge. Immediately after, an explosion rang out. “Our brother was killed,” the statement continued.

Volodymyrovych is but one of many thousands of Ukraine’s hero’s sacrificing their lives to protect their families, their sovereign country and their Democracy. Ordinary people are taking up arms, building Molotov cocktails, laying down under tanks and confronting heavily armed Russian soldiers with nothing but their tired bodies.

A child learns how to use an AK-47 assault rifle during a self-defense course for civilians in the outskirts of Lviv, in western Ukraine, on Friday, March 4.
Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images

Young men, old men, mothers and even grandmothers are separating from their loved ones, sending them West to safety, and then staying behind to defend their homeland; refusing to surrender their country to a megalomaniac despot like Putin.

A couple embraces before the woman boards a train leaving for western Ukraine, at the railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Sunday. The U.N. refugee agency says nearly 120,000 people have so far fled Ukraine into neighboring countries in the wake of the Russian invasion.
Andriy Andriyenko/AP
Stanislav, 40, says goodbye to his son, David, 2, and his wife, Anna, 35, on a train to Lviv, Ukraine, at Kyiv’s train station Thursday, March 3. Stanislav was staying to fight while his family was leaving the country to seek refuge in a neighboring country.

Hundreds of nations and companies have signed onto the sanctions devised, by the U.S., the European Union and NATO, to cripple the Russian economy, personally punish Putin and his oligarch supporters and possibly end the war. The sanctions are virtually unanimous worldwide. Russia is now the most isolated and vilified country in the world.

Their economy is in freefall, their stock market’s been shut down, the inflation rate is almost 25%, there’s a run on their banks and the difference in value of the ruble compared to the U.S. dollar is – a dollar, worth less than a penny. Putin is contemplating Marshall law and those who are able, are attempting to flee the country.

Long line at Russian banks. Ruble hits new low.

How did this maniac reach the point of deciding it was a grand idea and opportune time to start WWIII, when the world is just now recovering from a two year siege from the coronavirus?

Is he nuts? Is he so isolated from ordinary Russian’s, that he can’t see the humanity through his malevolent ambitions?

Is he suffering from Alzheimer’s; the plaque shielding any rational thought, and growing more belligerent by the day?

Putin has outlawed constructive political debate and eliminated free thinking courageous advisors. Everyone seated at that ridiculous block long Kremlin conference table appears terrified to speak up when Putin proposes his irrational ideas? The toadies at the seat of Russian power kowtow to every Putinish whim.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sits at one end of a long table with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, head of the general staff of the armed forces, at the other.
Putin with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, second from left, and Valery Gerasimov, head of the general staff of the armed forces, in Moscow on Sunday. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

But still, thousands of Russian hero’s have seen through the curtains of disinformation and demonstrated in the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg and cities across Russia, knowing that anyone willing to defy Putin’s omnipotent authority will surely end up in a gulag and maybe never heard from again.

Dozens of prominent athletes, sports teams and celebrities from Ukraine, from countries throughout the world and even from Russia, have joined the resistance.

“I am proud to be Ukrainian” Manchester City Player

Lviv based Pravda brewery switched from making beer to making Molotov cocktails. The bottle label says ‘Putin is a dickhead’.

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Many conscripted low wage Russian troops, now running out of food and fuel, were told they were taking part in routine military maneuvers or a “special military operation, but were actually headed to the Western front to bombard and lay siege to their peaceful relatives and neighbors.

tarbabys believes Putin might just be crazed and paranoid from bunkering throughout the covid pandemic. The entire civilized world told him that invading Ukraine was a crazy bat-shit idea, and that the world would bring a heavy ass-woopin set of sanctions, if he executed his 19th century plans of Russian empire.

He of course didn’t believe or listen to anyone, not his flunkies, not his oligarch buddies, not his military advisors (and especially not the conscripted soldiers who hadn’t a clue where they were going and what they were supposed to do) and certainly not the state-run media fed Russian people, who have family members at the receiving end of the missiles, rockets, tank shells, cluster bombs and thermobaric.

Oksana is hugged by her son, Dmytro, during a funeral for her husband, Volodymyr Nezhenets, in the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday, March 4. A small group of reservists buried their comrade after Nezhenets was one of three killed on Saturday, Feb. 26, in an ambush Ukrainian authorities say was caused by Russian “saboteurs.”
Emilio Morenatti/AP

Now the entire world has turned Russia into an isolated pariah with an economy cratering faster than the oligarchs yachts and jets have attempted fleeing to the Maldives. The world has taken notice and have enlisted money laundering repo-men tasked with recovering those ill-gotten gains.

Will Putin admit that he made the biggest political and military blunder in Russian history or will he double down on destroying Ukraine and establish a massive, documented war crime chronicle for all the world to see in real time. His own survival is in the balance.

Regime change might be the only hope of ending Ukraine’s nightmare. More than 8,000 Russian protestors have already been arrested, but it might take 100’s of thousands or several millions in the streets of Moscow and Putin’s St Petersburg to convince him that an about face is necessary to preserve the Russian Federation.

Crying boy asks to stop the war

Similar to the U.S. Congress, the Russian Federal Assembly, is made up of the 450 member State Duma (equivalent to our House of Representatives) and the 100 member Federation Council (similar to our U.S. Senate). One thing they both have in common is that they can commence the process of impeaching the President with a two-thirds majority. Do they have the courage to rain in their diabolical madman.

Most don’t hold much hope since the Duma passed a law this week proposing a 15-year prison sentence for anyone calling Putin’s “special military operation” a war or invasion, or spreading what Der Leader deems fake news. Another thing is the fact that the Assembly, like our U.S. Senate, is terrified of holding a lawless President accountable.

Experts believe that unless Putin is stopped now, the entire European continent will be in jeopardy. How this will end is anyone’s guess. Putin has put his nuclear options on high alert and all but explicitly threatened to use them, warning that countries that interfere with his invasion will suffer “consequences you have never faced in your history.” Is the world prepared to call his bluff, or let the madman roll through Eastern Europe.

A rich billionaire has put a $1 million bounty on Putin’s head and I’m sure behind the scenes, there are dozens more willing to kick in much more.

America should take note; we have our own Autocratic Putin want-a -be in Donald trump.

Putin has lied to the Russian people and even to his own conscripted soldiers from the very beginning of his Czarist crusade. After deploying 200,000 soldiers, more than half of his entire army, on the borders of Ukraine, he told Russia and the world that it was only military maneuvers and that he had no plans of invading Ukraine.

He then tried to manufacture a number of farcical false flag operations that convinced no one. He claimed his military hoards were actually “peacekeepers.” When no one except Trump fell for that, he tried to convince the world that he needed to prevent a nonexistent “genocide,” that Ukraine was actually the aggressor and were trying to oppress the Russian speaking residents of the Donbas region.

From that, he signed a decree recognizing the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk. Again not convincing, except to best bud Donald J. Trump, so Putin searched his addled mind and discovered that Ukraine was so full of Nazi’s that he had to round up President Zelensky, who is Jewish, and perform a de-Nazifying exorcism of the entire country.

This gets even more bizarre; he then tried to claim NATO and Ukraine were actually conspiring to attack the Russian homeland. Finally, delusional Putin appears on T.V. and claims the war “operation” is going as planned, even though everyone can see the myriad of logistical problems and blunders.

Are the indoctrinated folks in Russia able to even recognize the subterfuge? The disinformation, propaganda, lies and rants on Russian T.V. morph daily; we in the real world certainly aren’t bamboozled.

Trump lied so often during his administration, news outlets had whole teams of archivists documenting his 30,000 plus lies or misstatements. Both Putin and Trump are world renown liars who decry the fake news and conspiracies they embrace so easily.

Putin decreed Luhansk and Donetsk were now part of the Russian Empire; I’m surprised he didn’t use Trump’s Sharpie at the televised signing.

Trump said it was “wonderful,” “so smart,” and even “genius” for Putin to “declare a big portion of the Ukraine … as independent.” He claimed Putin will now “go in” and “be a peacekeeper.”

Trump also declared that Putin has “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen,” with “more army tanks than I’ve ever seen,” and “we could use that on our southern border.” Putin is “savvy,”

Trump would have loved that power and authority to decree, lets say, the Southern District of New York, as part of his own Trump empire.

Putin thinks nothing of the millions of Ukraine’s he’s ordered slaughtered, maimed, displaced and forced to flee to neighboring countries. And couldn’t care less about destroying their towns and cities, and the homes and businesses of millions of peaceful neighbors. He probably doesn’t even worry about creating another Chernobyl catastrophe by recklessly targeting and shelling critical nuclear infrastructure. But someone should tell him the wind blows from West to East.

Europe’s Largest Nuclear Plant Under Attack

Trump never cared about anyone but himself. He disparaged our neighbors (drug dealers and rapists) on our Southern border and tried to build a boondoggle of a wall to keep out the hoards. He ridicules anyone who refuses to bow down and tow the Trump company line.

Putin and his anti-Democratic criminal Kleptocracy have looted 85% of Russia’s wealth and treasures, amounting to trillions of dollars. He enriches a cabal of oligarchs who acquiesced to launder and bank his own ill-gotten billions.

Trump’s main goal in life, and as America’s Grifter in Chief, was stealing as much as he can from anyone he can. The victims are too long to list. Trump also signed countless executive orders enriching those willing to countenance his criminal enterprises and support his assault on America’s Democracy and Democratic institutions.

Putin‘s Autocratic authority knows no bounds, since he never had to worry about obscure notions like rules and laws.

Trump’s attacks and rants against our courts and Judicial institutions are legendary. And the only laws he obeys were his executive one’s absolving his convicted cronies of past crimes.

Putin preaches a Nationalist dogma and commands Russian’s to believe his lies about Making Russia Great Again, even though they’ve been on a downward spiral for the last 20 years.

Trump plays to the far rights nationalist sensibilities, campaigned on Making America Great Again, listens to no one and proclaims “Only I can do it.”

Putin hates the independent media and the truth even more than Trump, but also wields the power to poison, imprison or vanish those who speaks truth to power. His recent crackdown on his own citizens is reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s worst reign of dis-information and oppression. Escalating Ukraine war protests throughout Russia forced Putin to crack down on demonstrators and shut down all independent media.

Trump, envious of Putin’s omnipotent power to quash public dissent, never missed an opportunity to bash the media and cry “fake news.”

Putin declared himself President for life and enjoys election majorities of more than 90%. Ballot stuffing in Russia is a political art form.

Trump is again envious. He attempted to withhold $400 million in military aid allocated by Congress to help Ukraine defend itself from Russian aggression, unless President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to look into the debunked conspiracies during his presidential campaign.

Trump also tried to overturn the not even close 2020 election in more than 60 U.S. courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. After being soundly defeated and embarrassed in every case, he sent his MAGA storm troopers to attack our capitol, assault its defenders and hang his own vice president. His “big lie” persists today. And his cowardly sycophants in congress, in right wing media and in state houses across the country have embarked on a campaign of voter suppression, intimidation and nullification.

Putin expelled over the last two decades, anyone who might have convinced him to act in the best interests of his Ukrainian neighbors, the Russian Federation and the civilized world. He surrounded himself with the most extreme nationalistic politicians, military advisors and bootlickers.

Trump caters to the most extreme right wing white nationalistic, government hating, anti-democratic segments of American society. Anyone in the Republican Party, who had even a modicum of common sense, integrity or loyalty to our constitution quit his administration, and the party, or were drummed out. With the Trump MAGA cult operatives firmly entrenched at every level of his administration and in many of our democratic institutions, including the Justice Department, no one was left to stop Trump from trying to overthrow our Democracy and from destroying the GOP.

In Putin’s own mind, history should record his reign as the savior of the Soviet Empire. But in reality, he will be remembered for trying to destroy Europe’s largest, forward thinking, blossoming Democracy, vilified as a monomaniacal war criminal obsessed with the Russification of Ukraine, and for destroying what’s left of a backwards looking Russian Hegemony.

Ukraine is everything Russia is not. They embrace the Democratic principles that scare Putin into acting irrationally. Ukraine invests in their industrious and forward thinking people. Russia invests in overwhelming military armaments, the architecture of a world class police state and Kremlin sponsored media, cyber warfare and enriching the faithful.

That’s why those who can afford to flee Russia are not waiting for the other shoe to drop. While Czar Nicholas 2.0 contemplates Marshall Law and cracks down on nervous and skeptical Russian’s, those who can are fleeing to Finland, those who can’t are stocking up on critical medications, cans of Campbell’s tomato soup and root vegetables like beets, parsnips and turnips. It looks like a long siege.

Trump in his own mind is gearing up for the 2024 presidential election, notwithstanding even the most craven Republican political types, wish Trump would just go away. But in his own mind, he refuses to except being remembered only as the humiliated, twice impeached, biggest presidential loser in American history.

To the Trump MAGA cult faithful, who would “still” vote for him a third time, in spite of his efforts to end American Democracy as we know it and install himself, like Putin, as President for life, “Freedom is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose.”

News flash, you think your guns and ammunition would be safe from government apparatchiks, think again. Of the thousands of war protestors in Moscow and St Petersburg, you’ll not see one single assault weapon, hunting rifle, shotgun, handgun, pea shooter or even a slingshot. Of the 8,000 plus courageous demonstrators arrested and hauled off to prison, not one of them was carrying a weapon, concealed or otherwise. Why, because they’ve all been confiscated long ago and no one is allowed to sell them without Kremlin authorization.

I also bet you didn’t see any Peterbuilt or Kenworth Semi’s blocking the streets near the Kremlin while protesting minor inconveniences. And I bet if you had to donate 85% of your hard earned wages or profits to a Trump criminal crime family kleptocracy, instead of paying your fair share of taxes to a Democratic U.S. government, to help keep the wheels of our Capitalistic Social Democracy turning, you would not be so enthused for another Make Trump Great Again reboot. Need I mention, average earnings in Russia are $480 a month.

And don’t get me started on America’s long, enviable history of religious freedom and uncompromising separation of church and state, principles born out of centuries of religious wars in Europe. Russia is overwhelmingly (85%) Russian Orthodox, non religious and atheist. Trump’s white evangelical prosperity faithful are the worst type of Christians, the kind that drives the faithful and spiritual away from organized religious participation all together.

Listen up America, “Freedom” is not a choice, nor is it guaranteed, It has to be nurtured and fought for every day and in every way. Ten days ago, the people of Ukraine were going about their business in a free Democratic country, led by Democratically elected Volodymyr Zelensky; today the people of Kyiv are dodging ballistic missiles and rockets in their Freedom Square, cities across Ukraine are under siege from desperate delusional Autocrat and madman Vladimir Putin, and Zelensky is trying to defend and rally his nation from an air raid shelter somewhere below the cratered streets of Kyiv.

Trump MAGA Rally
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Let’s discuss what’s happening in Russia. To put it simply, it’s going full fascist. Authorities launched a propaganda campaign to gain popular support for their invasion of Ukraine and they’re getting lots of it. You can see “Z” on these guys’ clothes. What does it mean?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks during a press conference in Kyiv on March 3, 2022. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West on March 3, 2022, to increase military aid to Ukraine, saying Russia would advance on the rest of Europe otherwise. “If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!” Zelensky said at a press conference.
Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Women and children try to get onto a train bound for Lviv, Ukraine, at Kyiv’s train station Thursday, March 3. Ukrainian men have been conscripted to fight in the war while hundreds of thousands of women and children flee the country to seek refuge in neighboring nations that are members of the EU.
Emilio Morenatti/AP
Local militiaman Valery, 37, carries a child as he helps a fleeing family across a bridge destroyed by artillery on the outskirts Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 2.
Emilio Morenatti/AP
A member of the Ukrainian Emergency Service surveys damage to Kharkiv’s City Hall in the city’s central square following shelling Tuesday, March 1. Russian strikes pounded the square in the country’s second-largest city — in addition to other civilian sites Tuesday — in what the country’s president condemned as a blatant campaign of terror by Moscow.
Pavel Dorogoy/AP
A girl draws at a table set up in the bomb shelter at the Okhmadet Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, on Tuesday, March 1.
Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Mothers tend to their children undergoing cancer treatments on Saturday, Feb. 28, in the bomb shelter of the oncology ward at Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Yevghen Zbormyrsky, 49, runs in front of his burning home after it was shelled in the city of Irpin, Ukraine, outside the country’s capital of Kyiv, on Friday, March 4.
Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
Members of a territorial defense unit prepare to deploy to various parts of the city on Tuesday, March 2, in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Related: Putin’s Big War Lie: Ukraine Doesn’t Have A Nazi Problem

1945 – Politics

Putin’s Big War Lie: Ukraine Doesn’t Have A Nazi Problem

By Jack Buckby – March 3, 2022

Putin

Russian President Putin from back in 2018.

What Putin Means When He Calls Ukrainians “Nazi” – In February, British and American spies obtained intelligence suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning to launch the biggest attack on a European country since the Second World War and that any military action would take place after a “false flag” attack designed to justify his invasion.

British MI6 chief Richard Moore told Twitter that intelligence officials “exposed his attempts to engineer ‘false flag’, fake attacks to justify his invasion.”

Intelligence officials also suggested that Putin was looking for a “pretext” for invasion, and as Putin signed a decree recognizing the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk, he promised to send in a “special military operation” to initiate the “denazification” of Ukraine.

It was part of the pretext of his war campaign against Ukraine, perhaps designed to garner sympathy from Western liberals. The implication of his comments is that Ukraine is fundamentally a Nazi country that needs to be liberated, and while that is patently untrue, it is based very loosely on some truth.Sponsored Content[Photos] Jen Psaki ​​Is Happily Married To Her PartnerRetro Pages[Pics] This Aircraft Always Tailgates Air Force One, Here’s WhyLivestly

Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi “Azov” Regiment

Putin’s comment about Nazis in Ukraine appears to be a reference to the Azov regiment, a volunteer-based far-right infantry military unit with an estimated 900 soldiers. It is made up of ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists.Sponsored ContentThese Maps Will Blow Your MindFar & WideFolding Beds For Any Sized RoomNew Beds | Search Ads

The unit was formed in May of 2014 and attracts the ire of Russians not for its members’ views on race, but because it is strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. The infantry unit was formed from the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly organization and the Patriots of Ukraine gang.

It previously fought against pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, which Putin recognized as independent before he launched this “special military operation.”

Ukraine Does Not Have a Nazi Problem

A Pew Research Center survey from 2018 found that Ukraine is the most accepting nation in Central and Eastern European countries for Jews. White nationalism does exist in Ukraine, but not to the extent that Vladimir Putin appeared to imply – and certainly not enough to justify a full-scale invasion that has killed thousands of soldiers and innocent people.

The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, or the Supreme Council of Ukraine, has 450 seats – of which 241 are occupied by the Servant of the People party. The party is named after the Servant of the People television show that current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy starred in. It is a centrist, pro-European party, and Zelenskyy is Jewish.

The party is supported in government by the populist For the Future party which holds 21 seats, and the regionalist Trust party which has 20 seats.

The biggest opposition party in Ukraine is the centrist “For Life” party, which has 43 seats. European Solidary has 27 seats and is a member of the European People’s Party – a grouping of liberal and conservative parties across Europe. The Ukrainian nationalist and center-left party Batkivshchyna holds 25 seats.

Ukrainian politics is not dominated or influenced to any great extent by neo-Nazis.

While neo-Nazis do exist in Ukraine, they are an extreme minority, with only 5% of Ukrainian citizens stating that they would not accept Jews as fellow citizens – compared to 14% in Russia.

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and report on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

Author: John Hanno

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.