Vladimir Putin’s end of days
As I write this, Russian mercenary chief and oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin has moved his forces into Russia in a bold attempt at a coup against his old friend and benefactor Vladimir Putin. I wish Prigozhin luck and hope he succeeds. But whatever the outcome, Prigozhin represents a growing discontent among oligarchs and other Russian power brokers inside Russia. None know better than they that Putin is bad for businesses.
This move was inevitable, as revolution has been simmering in Russia for years just below the boiling point. The biggest problem with Putin’s regime has always been Putin himself. Even by certain Stalinist standards, Vladimir Putin is an enigma. He doesn’t tick the usual boxes of human motivation.
If you want to understand what makes Vlad tick, the best way is to not only look at the countries he invades but at the methods he uses against the people he has had murdered. The Russian President’s favoured method for killing people these days is defenestration, that is, having them thrown out of windows. But once in a while he uses extraordinary means. Those have included the deadly isotope polonium 210 and the binary nerve agent Novichok.
These are methods of murder that could only be recruited by a killer who is sponsored by the power and resources of an entire state the size of Russia. In other words, there can be no question that they came from Vladimir Putin and no one else. Why Putin would deliberately use such unnecessarily exotic means for killing people, methods that track back to him and him alone, is a puzzle on its face. It stops being a puzzle when you understand the man.
Vladimir Putin isn’t just your garden variety psychopath. He’s an exhibitionistic narcissist who revels in his reputation as a real-life Bond Villain. For Putin, the evil that he does isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. He lives to be evil, so it’s no wonder that people like Donald Trump and many members of the American Republican Party secretly (and not so secretly) admire him so much.
It will be revealing to see who Trump and Republicans favor in this recent coup attempt, Vlad’s side or Prigozhin’s side. MAGA Republicans will undoubtedly wait to to take their cue from what Trump has to say and act accordingly. It’s been disgusting to watch the rape of Ukraine from afar while Republicans cheer Putin on. That alone ought to teach anyone with a brain of how awful Republicans have become.
In simplistic terms, you don’t need to know anything more about Vladimir Putin than this. He is pure evil. He lives to be evil and he loves his reputation for being evil. He cultivates it, he nurtures it, and his secret desire to have atrocities and pornographic acts of monstrous violence attributed to him is almost sexual. He is the most dangerous man alive, and I hope that this recent attempt to overthrow him succeeds. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.